I could be biased, but I’m saying it anyway: Mississippi women are total badasses. In celebration of International Women’s Day (March 8), we’ve gathered some of the most powerful things Mississippi women have ever said or written.

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“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.”

– Oprah Winfrey, TV host, media proprietor

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“Momma used to say, ‘Make your mess your message.’ Find the meaning behind whatever it is you’re going through because everybody’s got something.” 

– Robin Roberts, broadcaster 

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“When you’re a mom and you have three children, nothing bothers you. Trust me. Who cares what people say? I’ve got other things to deal with.”

– Faith Hill, country singer

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“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”

-Angie Thomas, author, “The Hate U Give” 

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“I don’t allow anybody to change me. I still walk outta my house in rollers and I take walks. I do not care what people think.”

– Britney Spears, pop singer 

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“I’m just a little editor in a little spot. A lot of other little editors in a lot of little spots is what helps make this country. It’s either going to help protect that freedom that we have, or else it’s going to let that freedom slip away by default.”

– Hazel Brannon Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper editor 

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“I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”

– Ida B. Wells-Barnett, African-American journalist and feminist born into slavery in Holly Springs

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“I stopped trying to rank sorrow, realized that the world has sorrow enough for all of us, and when some of it falls to you the best hope you have is letting yourself suffer through it.” 

― Beth Ann Fennelly, poet, “Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother”

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“People give pain, are callous and insensitive, empty and cruel…but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum that these human beings make.”

– Eudora Welty, writer/novelist

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“I was told in so many ways and by so many people, particularly men, you can’t do this job. And I had to remind them that evidently they had not read my resume and seen what I had done personally on my own, and that I was the widow of Medgar Evers, but I was my own woman with my own accomplishments.”

– Myrlie Evers-Williams, on becoming chairperson of the NAACP

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“I always think about the idea that God never gives you more than you can handle, and just the idea that God would be looking at me and thinking, ‘Eh, I think she can handle more.’ And the angels thinking, ‘What are you doing? You’re a lunatic.’ And God being like, ‘No, no, trust me. She can handle this.'”

– Tig Notaro, comedian and breast cancer survivor