Ivonne > Ivonne's Quotes

“Even a single positive action lifting another woman up creates a ripple effect that carries on far beyond the original act and has an impact that’s difficult to measure. When you lift another woman up, you inspire others around you to do the same. And those opportunities continue to be passed on.”
― Molly Galbraith, Strong Women Lift Each Other Up

“Families are a trip,” says Lee. “You think you know them so well that you stay wrong about each other.”

It’s true.

“It wasn’t until I lived on my own that my mom and dad became these other people to me,” she says.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Permanent Record

“A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone’s lives.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society. If you don’t, mortality is only a horror. But if you do, it is not. Loyalty, said Royce, “solves the paradox of our ordinary existence by showing us outside of ourselves the cause which is to be served, and inside of ourselves the will which delights to do this service, and which is not thwarted but enriched and expressed in such service.” In more recent times, psychologists have used the term “transcendence” for a version of this idea. Above the level of self-actualization in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they suggest the existence in people of a transcendent desire to see and help other beings achieve their potential.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“One has to decide whether one’s fears or one’s hopes are what should matter most.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“As people become aware of the finitude of their life, they do not ask for much. They do not seek more riches. They do not seek more power. They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in the world—to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“It's like this when you fall hard for a musician. It's a crush with religious overtones. You listen to the songs and you memorize the words and the notes and this is a form of prayer. You attend the shows and this is the liturgy. You're interested in relics -- guitar picks, set lists, the sweaty napkin applied to His brow. You set up shrines in your room. It's not just about the music. It's about who you are when you listen to the music and who you wish to be and the way a particular song can bridge that gap, can make you feel the abrupt thrill of absolute faith.”
― Steve Almond, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us

“What does it mean that the most popular and unifying form of entertainment in America circa 2014 features giant muscled men, mostly African-American, engaged in a sport that causes many of them to suffer brain damage? What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood—run, leap, throw, tackle—into a corporatized form of simulated combat? That a collision sport has become the leading signifier of our institutions of higher learning, and the undisputed champ of our colossal Athletic Industrial Complex?”
― Steve Almond, Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto

“This, of course, is the big dance of capitalism: how to keep morality from gumming up the gears of profit, how to convince people to make bad decisions without seeing them as bad.”
― Steve Almond, Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto

“What would happen if some invisible gas leak in the school cafeteria caused diminished brain activity in students? Can we safely assume district officials would evacuate the school until further notice? That parents would be up in arms? That media and lawyers would descend in droves to collect statements from the innocent victims? Can we assume that the community would not gather together en masse on Friday nights to eat hot dogs and watch the gas leak?”
― Steve Almond, Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto

“When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else's oppression, we'll find our opportunities to make real change.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Being privileged doesn't mean that you are always wrong and people without privilege are always right. It means that there is a good chance you are missing a few very important pieces of the puzzle.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“You have to get over the fear of facing the worst in yourself. You should instead fear unexamined racism. Fear the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don't know it. But do not fear those who bring that oppression to light. Do not fear the opportunity to do better.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“I know that it's hard to believe that the people you look to for safety and security are the same people who are causing us so much harm. But I'm not lying and I'm not delusional. I am scared and I am hurting and we are dying. And I really, really need you to believe me.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“When somebody asks you to “check your privilege” they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing and may in fact be contributing to those struggles. It is a big ask, to check your privilege. It is hard and often painful, but it’s not nearly as painful as living with the pain caused by the unexamined privilege of others. You may right now be saying “but it’s not my privilege that is hurting someone, it’s their lack of privilege. Don’t blame me, blame the people telling them that what they have isn’t as good as what I have.” And in a way, that is true, but know this, a privilege has to come with somebody else’s disadvantage—otherwise, it’s not a privilege.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“You are racist because you were born and bred in a racist, white supremacist society. White Supremacy is, as I’ve said earlier, insidious by design. The racism required to uphold White Supremacy is woven into every area of our lives. There is no way you can inherit white privilege from birth, learn racist white supremacist history in schools, consume racist and white supremacist movies and films, work in a racist and white supremacist workforce, and vote for racist and white supremacist governments and not be racist.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Systemic racism is a machine that runs whether we pull the levers or not, and by just letting it be, we are responsible for what it produces. We have to actually dismantle the machine if we want to make change.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Apologize. You’ve done something that hurt another human being. Even if you don’t fully understand why or how, you should apologize. It is the decent thing to do when you respect people. You don’t have to totally “get it” to know that you don’t want to continue doing something that hurts people.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Isn’t it nice … once you’ve outgrown the ideas of what life should be and you just enjoy what it is.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“We are tied to each other. We can hate and love, miss and loathe each other all within the same breath. We can never want to see each other again while never wanting to let go.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, After I Do

“...we keep our eyes closed tightly except for the fleeting moments when we are looking directly into each other’s eyes. And it is in these moments that I know he understands what I am trying to tell him.

Which is the whole point, our only reason for doing what we are doing.

We don’t really care about pleasure. We are aching to be felt by the other, aching to feel each other. We move to tell each other what’s in our souls, to say what words can’t. We are touching each other in an attempt to listen.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves

“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of fucking story.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“We're walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“The more we trust, the farther we are able to venture.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“Despite a 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages and 65 percent the second time around; despite the staggering frequency of affairs; despite the fact that monogamy is a ship sinking faster than anyone can bail it out, we continue to cling to the wreckage with absolute faith in its structural soundness.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“there is more than a hint of arrogance in the assumption that we can make our relationships permanent,”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Sex, Lies and Domestic Bliss