Tabitha Carvan > Quotes

“When it happens, pure leisure should feel like play, not work. You won’t be worrying about whether everyone else is having a good time; you won’t be lumped with the labor—physical, mental, or emotional—of planning, delegating, and cleaning up; you won’t be doing it out of obligation, because you know it’s good for you. Pure leisure requires a deliberate choice to carve out nonpurposive time just for yourself. For women, Schulte explains, that’s “nothing less than a courageous—subversive, almost—act of resistance.” But shouldn’t that feel good?”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Desire becomes overlaid with shame, and as a result, girls start to conceal their “vital, curious, pleasure-loving soul.” We dissociate ourselves from her, erase her from our histories, because it’s easier to make our way in the world that way. On some level, Gilligan says, we’re aware of what we’re sacrificing by dissociating from our desires, but this “awareness of complicity is so shameful that it often seems easier to justify it than to experience and question what has been sacrificed.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Being in control is not the same as being free; and being out of control isn’t always scary. Or maybe it is scary, but good-scary.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Some things that seem obvious still need to be proven over and over again. Female birds sing. Women play. We are capable of having fun. And when we do, it's because we want to--the same as anyone else.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Does it matter what it is that moves us, so long as we are moved?”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“When you’re a girl who really loves a thing, it’s never just about you and your thing. Everyone else makes it their problem. You can’t love the thing unseen, not even in your bedroom, alone. You either point-blank love the wrong thing (Take That), or you love the right thing (Blur) but in the wrong way (screaming at concerts) or for the wrong reasons (ogling).”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Fathers are able to see themselves as other things because, typically, their professional identity is less affected by having children, and also because they simply have the uninterrupted time and the space to do so--thanks to mothers doing more than their share of unpaid care and domestic work.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“For women, there has never been a history or a culture of leisure or play, and after childhood, women tend to lose play entirely. There’s just this huge sense of loss. When you don’t make that time a priority there are huge consequences, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“My best friend, Beth, tells me her best friend Brené Brown says you should keep a list in your purse of the people whose opinions matter to you. It’s a handy reminder: you needn’t worry about anybody else. My purse, which Nathan bought me, is patterned with a collage of Benedict Cumberbatch faces, so I don’t need such a list. Cashiers who say “I love your purse!” are the only people worth listening to.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“The fathers couldn't see themselves as parents, and I, the Mother, couldn't see myself as anything else. The parenting, the mothering, went all the way to the edges of me, and even slightly beyond the edges too, like coloring-in that didn't stay between the lines.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Now the photos serve as a reminder she says, to her, but mostly to her clients. “You should allow yourself more than a nail appointment. You should indulge in things that refresh your spirit, or make you laugh, or make you feel something.” She sighs. “People deserve indulgences.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“I never knew Kierkegaard was funny, but I think this is funny: “The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed.” I did not notice. I would catch my reflection in the mirror in the bathroom, where I went again and again to wash my hands after changing diapers. So used to gazing down at babies, I was shocked, every time, to discover there was another face up there. Our eyes would meet, and then I would finish drying my red, cracked hands and leave her behind, as if she were nothing at all. I guess it’s not that funny.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“should probably mention that I know—now—what kind of person communicates via hidden notes in a library book. It’s the same kind of person who dances in the dark: a person who doesn’t want to be seen. A person Just Like Me. But that’s the thing about dancing in the dark. It’s good that no one can see you, but you can’t see each other either. You can’t see what good company you’re in. All these people, hiding. Just Like You.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“There are no such things as "girl toys" and "boy toys," but when a girl plays, it's somehow different. A boy does what he does because he has a passion, he follows his heart. It's a worthy pursuit, with inherent, universal, and lasting value, so we'd better support and protect it. When a girl does what she does, it's merely the by-product of outside forces. She's being manipulated into have inauthentic, disposable feelings for something with dubious appeal. Boys can enjoy play for a lifetime; girls are expected to mature out of it. It passes, just like their fads.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Beating oneself up for what really gets you excited, it’s a masculine approach to women’s experiences,” Emma says. “We have been acculturated to do it to ourselves.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Desire becomes overlaid with shame, and as a result, girls start to conceal their "vital, curious, pleasure-loving soul." We dissociate ourselves from her, erase her from our histories, because it's easier to make our way in the world that way.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“There is no age limit on liking things," she says, "and there's no age limit on human connection--for men, or for women, or for anyone." Yep, it's pretty straightforward.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“I give what I can of my love, time, and support to my family and friends, but reserve the right to have a private, inner life.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“We “don’t expect female texts to have universal things to say,” Loofbourow writes, so we dismiss them outright, without any real consideration. We only glance at them, and we think that’s enough to get all the info we need: they’re just girl stories.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“When you eat pizza, you eat pizza as a mother. Every day--hundreds of times a day, every day--you give up what you want and how you want it in so many tiny little ways, that whatever squeezed-out orange-half remains of you, that's who you are now. It's fine, really.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Women mature out of their pleasures. Men, on the other hand, get to hang on to theirs, turning them into lifelong passions, or even better, a career.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Tell me, do you know what it is that you love? Not who—I already know you love the most important people in your life—but what. And if you didn’t have to explain or defend it, would that change anything for you? I’m not implying you’re harboring an unspoken passion for something deeply embarrassing, although if you are, then you’re in the right place. But have you made yourself available to love the full suite of things that might move you? Or has the soft animal of your body been cut off at the pass, diverted toward things that seem more important? If, like the nurse in Elizabeth Caplice’s blog post, I told you it was okay, that not everything needs to be about making meaning, that not everything has to be justifiable as a good use of your time or mind, could you then let the soft animal of your body find its way toward loving what it loves? And what would that look like for you? It’s not that easy.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Don’t you think it’s a bit weird that when you’re dreaming, you can scare yourself? Really, how can you not know that someone’s going to leap out from behind the bushes, when it’s you who put them there? Conscious, unconscious, Freud, something something? I gues it’s the same thing with desires. They similarly exist inside you but can still take you by surprise.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“In her book The Birth of Pleasure, Gilligan writes that before the teenage years, young girls can move easily, their voices free from "second thoughts and instant revision." Then in adolescence, "girls often discover or fear that if they give voice to vital parts of themselves, their pleasure and their knowledge, they will endanger connection with others and also the world at large.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“In an excellent essay for Catapult magazine about fanfiction (which is really an excellent essay about love), the writer Emilia Copeland Titus notes, “Indifference is easy, but love—the kind of love that runs so deep and so clear that it threatens to burst the dam of your heart—is difficult.” It’s true. “There will always be people who expect you to explain that love,” she continues, “and that is perhaps the biggest challenge of all, even for those whose careers are dedicated to explaining and describing ideas.” But eventually, holding back that dam-bursting love gets tiring. And then, there’s only one thing for it: “Let the floodgates open.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“That it’s “just a show” is exactly the problem, I howled. How can a TV show have taken on such outsized significance in my life? Because there’s nothing else to compete with it, that’s why! What had my life become? I wailed. There was nothing that was my own. All I had was Benedict Cumberbatch!”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“The bottom line is this: Nathan saw that my thing with Benedict Cumberbatch was weirdly important to me; it offered me something that I obviously needed, and most importantly, it had nothing to do with him. He gave me something much better than his permission: an exemption from having to care what he thinks. He’s that guy, the one man in the world who is more attractive to me than Benedict Cumberbatch.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Of all things, why was that the trade I made? I had no time and space to progress anything of any substance in my life, and now, all of a sudden, I’ve made eight hours available to listen to Benedict Cumberbatch doing the voice of Rumpole of the Bailey on audiobook? Of course it felt wrong; it felt like being a bad mother. That is what it feels like to want more.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“In an essay that appears in a book called On Being 40(ish), the writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner says the essential conundrum of middle age comes down to this: “How can you be this dissatisfied when you have this much? How can you be this satisfied when you have so little?” Brodesser-Akner writes that it’s okay not to have any answers, but in my mind, I turn these questions over again and again.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“Beth taught me this lesson too, years ago, when she developed another important list (she loves lists), this one being her “list of interests.” She came up with this concept after she got tired of people asking her if she was going to renovate her house. She worked out the best way to shut down these conversations was simply to say: “Renovation is not on my list of interests.” It wasn’t figurative. She actually created a list of interests so “home renovation” could, specifically, not be on it.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It