“I was ten. I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day, but I knew from commercials that one's menstrual period was a blue liquid that you poured like laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency. This wasn't blue, so...I ignored it for a few hours.”

“I was ten years old. I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day but I knew from commercials that one's menstrual period was a blue liquid that you poured like laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency. This wasn't blue so...I ignored it for a few hours. When we got home I pulled my mom aside to ask if it was weird I was bleeding in my underpants. She was very sympathetic but also a little baffled. Her eyes said "Dummy didn't you read 'How Shall I Tell My Daughter ". I HAD read it but nowhere in the pamphlet did anyone say that your period was NOT a blue liquid. At that moment two things became clear to me I was now technically a woman and I would never be a doctor.”

“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.”

“The line from Pulp Fiction—the one Samuel L. Jackson shouts at John Travolta as they’re trying to wash blood off their hands—pops into my head: 'I used the same soap you did and when I dried my hands, the towel didn't look like no fuckin’ maxi-pad!' I almost—almost—share this most quotable of cinematic quotes with him, when I remember it contains The Word. You know: 'maxi-pad.”

“ Blue! My mind screams it along with everyone else. Blue, blue, blue, blue, blue. I thought it. I wanted to think it. I wasn't thinking yellow. I was thinking blue, and the wizard said blue, so everyone heard me thinking blue! Maybe, if this really, really works, none of my colors will be silent anymore.”

“Picasso had his pink period and his blue period. I am in my blonde period right now.”