monique jonath > monique's Quotes

“I believe that all organizing is science fiction - that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“Your no makes the way for your yes. Boundaries create the container within which your yes is authentic. Being able to say no makes yes a choice.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“I touch my own skin, and it tells me that before there was any harm, there was miracle.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“We need radical honesty—learning to speak from our root systems about how we feel and what we want. Speak our needs and listen to others’ needs. To say, “I need to hear that you miss me.” “When you’re high all the time it’s hard for me to feel your presence.” “I lied.” “The way you talked to that man made me feel unseen.” “Your jealousy makes me feel like an object and not a partner.” The result of this kind of speech is that our lives begin to align with our longings, and our lives become a building block for authentic community and ultimately a society that is built around true need and real people, not fake news and bullshit norms.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“I believe our imaginations—particularly the parts of our imaginations that hold what we most desire, what brings us pleasure, what makes us scream yes—are where we must seed the future, turn toward justice and liberation, and reprogram ourselves to desire sexually and erotically empowered lives.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“Pleasure is the point. Feeling food is not frivolous, it is freedom.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“Pleasure is not one of the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human systems, are structured for; it is the aliveness and awakening, the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being miraculous.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“Pleasure activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations of oppression and/or supremacy.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“What is easy is sustainable. Birds coast when they can.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

“We also learn that love is a limited resource and that the love we want and need is too much, that we are too much. We learn to shrink, to lie about the whole love we need, settling with not quite good enough in order to not be alone.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them—even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“But for a society buit on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“Being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate

“But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always a little love left, underneath.
Yes. Horrible, isn't it?”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine. But this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. For the last time.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“We aren't human."

"Yes. We. Are." His voice turns fierce. "I don't give a shit what the something-somethingth council of big important farts decreed, or how the geomests classify things, or any of that. That we're not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don't have to feel bad about how they treat us.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being. I am me, and you.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“True peace required the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Killing Moon

“To those who’ve survived: Breathe. That’s it. Once more. Good. You’re good. Even if you’re not, you’re alive. That is a victory.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“Many people think a trans woman’s deepest desire is to live in her true gender, but actually it is to always stand in good lighting.”
― Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

“She knew that no matter how you self-identify ultimately, chances are that you succumb to becoming what the world treats you as.”
― Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

“Yes.” Reese nods. “I mean, they go through everything I go through as a trans woman. Divorce is a transition story. Of course, not all divorced women go through it. I’m talking about the ones who felt their divorce as a fall, or as a total reframing of their lives. The ones who have seen how the narratives given to them since girlhood have failed them, and who know there is nothing to replace it all. But who still have to move forward without investing in new illusions or turning bitter—all with no plan to guide them. That’s as close to a trans woman as you can get. Divorced women are the only people who know anything like what I know. And, since I don’t really have trans elders, divorced women are the only ones I think have anything to teach me, or who I care to teach in return.”
― Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

“I got to a point where I thought I didn't need to put up with the bullshit of gender in order to satisfy my sense of self.”
― Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby