Brea > Brea's Quotes

“...it must become an incredible pleasure to be able to be honest, expect to be whole, and to know that we are in a community that will hold us accountable and change with us.”
― 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

“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

“In her essay “On the Issue of Roles,” Toni Cade explains that if we want to have a revolution, we have to craft revolutionary relationships, in action, not simply in rhetoric.56 She explains that a revolution cannot be created by conforming to existing roles in relationships already defined by the systems we want to overthrow. We have to practice creating new relationships.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

“. . I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have what I like or if my tastes are too various to be sustained by one of anything.”
― Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

“If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved