Melody > Melody's Quotes

“Let me tell you what really happened, the voice said. All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others' opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. You were misled by your own frustration and passivity, believing that what you were not allowed to have was what your heart was destined to embrace.”
― Ha Jin, Waiting

“Can you show how you missed me?"
The baby placed both hands on her stomach, saying "Miss you here.”
― Ha Jin, Waiting

“Love did not help. The possibility of love only filled him with despondency and languor, as though he was sick in the soul. If only he had never known Manna; if only ehe could get back into his old rut again; if only he could return to an undisturbed, contented life.”
― Ha Jin, Waiting

“Rune never said anything about it, but to anyone who had known him a long time, it was as if he shrank a couple of inches in the years that followed. As if he sort of crumpled with a deep sigh and never really breathed properly again.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“The mind is very resilient and very invested in your preservation. It will do what it must protect you. Many reactions to chronic abuse may seem illogical or unhelpful when we look at them with a critical eye but the brain and the body do what they have to do to survive. In an attempt to protect you from future harm, your brain and body may either develop a heightened sensitivity to threats of discrimination or they may resort to numbness. Race based traumatic stress injuries can come from direct experiences of one on one racism, but they can also be triggered by witnessing racism.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“The colonial era propagated the concept of scarcity and competition to many inherently collaborative and cooperative cultures, replacing the idea of strength as a community with an obsessive focus on individualism. The ideology of isolationism and individualism is uniquely that of colonization. The world has suffered from accepting this ideology, systems of oppression easily stay in place and are unquestioned under this framework.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“It is cruel to ask for the wounded to prioritize the feelings of the unharmed as they seek out care. Give yourself permission to conserve your emotional energy and set boundaries with people who aren't willing to understand how you have been harmed.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“For some pursuit of knowledge is enough of a motivator, but the issue of funding is a barrier. The scientific community is frequently compromise because of funding sources. The absence of research on a topic that concerns you as an under represented person doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. It could simply mean that the motivation or the economic incentive for doing the research doesn't exist. Western culture and by extension all nations affected by colonialism is money driven, if there isn't a monetary reason to do some thing you will be hard-pressed to get it done.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“The idea that there is a right and a wrong way to do everything is a very colonize dichotomous way of seeing the world.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“If poverty leads to health disparities, then the story is that people should work harder to escape the cycle of generational poverty. On the other hand, suppose systemic oppression is the cause of health disparities, in that case, all signs point to a deeper level of work needing to be done by the dominant social group. Who can monitize that? Why would a self-absorbed, dominant cultural group want to do the work? In contrast, helping people suffering from poor health outcomes brought on by chronic stress is very lucrative. Millions of dollars earmarked for minority health promotion are awarded to nonprofits every year. Simultaneously, minority let nonprofits are consistently aborted less funding.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“White supremacy culture would have us believe that wealth is a cure all for systemic oppression, focusing on institutionalized discrimination. In reality, building community and spending time in affirming spaces is a far more powerful treatment for the damage systemic oppression does to the body.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“Correlating gender identity with genitalia was introduced to many African countries by European colonizers.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“Policing the behavior of marginalized folks under the guise of protecting them is a symptom of white supremacy, not a legitimate public health intervention.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“As the majority of researchers are part of the dominant culture in the west, it makes sense to suspect that cultural centrism could compromise the objectivity of studies.”
― Dalia Kinsey, Decolonizing Wellness

“It was you, Tate,” she said, and then thought, It was always you. One side of her heart longing, the other shielding.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn't exist yet.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you'd feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“Maybe the idea of love ending being a negative thing is simply a matter of perspective. Because to me, the idea that a love came to an end means that, at some point, there was love that existed. And there was a time in my life, before you, when I was completely untouched by it.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Starts with Us

“People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is 'you're safe with me'- that's intimacy.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don't do that.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“I’m under absolutely no obligation to make sense to you.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Heartbreak is a loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You can be sorry about something and not regret it,” Evelyn says.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“But if you have to go, then go. Go if it hurts. Go if it's time. Just go knowing you were loved, that I will never forget you, that you will live in everything Connor and I do. Go knowing I love you purely, Harry, that you were an amazing father. Go knowing I told you all my secrets. Because you were my best friend.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life