Randon Billings Noble

“In the early 1830s the writer George Sand, a woman, had a man's overcoat and a pair of boots made for her so she could have the same pleasure - to walk the streets of Paris free to look at whatever she liked. In her autobiography she writes: "I can't express the pleasure my boots gave me ... With those little iron-shot heels, I was on solid pavement. I flew from one end of Paris to the other. It seemed to me that I could go round the world. And then, my clothes feared nothing. I ran out in every kind of weather, I came home at every sort of hour ... No one paid any attention to me, and no one guessed at my disguise ... No one knew me, no one looked at me, no one found fault with me; I was an atom lost in that immense crowd.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays

“The tension between not being let in and not being let go fixes us. Especially when it's the not-being-let-in that won't let you go. You're held at the threshold. You're turned away, but you can't turn away.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays