Badass Women Give the Best Advice. Becca Anderson

of the cockpit, Shirley Muldowney became an internationally famous superstar with a critically acclaimed film about her life and achievements, Heart Like a Wheel.

      Hockey is certainly no sport for lightweights. For many, taking shots from a bunch of big men with sticks might seem like a risky business, but to French Canadian Manon Rhéaume, it was the sport she loved. She was a goalie for the Atlanta Knights and, as such, is the first woman to have played professional hockey in the men’s leagues. At five feet six and 135 pounds, Manon was slight compared to many of her team members and opponents, but she proved her ability to stop a puck. The world is finally taking note of women’s ability to play this sport overall; in the year 1998, women’s ice hockey became a full medal sport at the Winter Olympics, no small thanks to Manon and others like her.

      Then there’s Angela Hernandez, who is surely to be admired for fighting for her right to bullfight in the birthplace of machismo—Spain! In the polyester-laden year 1973, she demanded to be allowed to compete in the male-only zone of the bullring. This caused quite a commotion; how dare she question the 1908 law forbidding women to participate in the sport of horseback bullfighting. Twenty-year-old Angela took her case all the way to the courts, where the Madrid labor court ruled in her favor, allowing her to fight, but only on foot. But threatened males found another way to thwart her—the Ministry of the Interior wouldn’t issue her a license. Would-be torero Angela refused to go quietly into the Seville sunset, loudly contesting her plight, “These damned men. What do they think they are doing? Women fly planes, fight wars, and go on safaris; what’s so different about fighting bulls?”

      There’s nothing more freeing than the shackles of love.

      —Emma Racine deFleur, witty writer

      The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

      —Margaret Atwood, Canadian literary critic, eco-activist, and author of The Handmaid’s Tale

      Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.

      —Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist, painter, and socialite of the 1920s

      Love, like a river, will cut a new path whenever it meets an obstacle.

      —Crystal Middlemas, poetic writer

      When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.

      —Elizabeth Bowen, Irish novelist and short story writer

      Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.

      —Dorothy Parker, deathless poet, short fiction writer, critic, and satirist of skewering wit

      The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity—love. And the story of all love is not important—what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

      —Helen Hayes, prize-winning twentieth century actress

      There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

      —George Sand (pen name of Amantine Aurore Dupin), badass nineteenth-century French author

      The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.

      —Helen Keller, author, activist, lecturer, and the first deaf-blind person to earn a B.A.

      Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.

      —Audre Lorde, award-winning writer, poet, and civil rights activist

      The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

      —Annie Dillard, author of notable fiction, nonfiction, and poetry

      Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same.

      —Flavia Weedn, prize-winning artist, illustrator, and inspirational author

      Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.

      —Elynor Glyn, daring English novelist and scriptwriter

      You will manage to keep a woman in love with you only for as long as you can keep her in love with the person she becomes when she is with you.

      —C. JoyBell C., inspirational author

      I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

      —Alice Walker, award-winning author, poet, and activist

      I love you—those three words have my life in them.

      —Alexandra Feodorovna Romanov, last Empress of Russia, addressing her husband, Nicholas II

      We can only learn to love by loving.

      —Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher

      Love is the mortar that holds the human structure together.

      —Karen Casey, inspiring author