♡ > ♡'s Quotes

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are
presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is
extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it
is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,
ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe”
― Frantz Fanon

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
― Alexander Den Heijer

“Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
― Audre Lorde

“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."

I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
― Audre Lorde

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
― Arundhati Roy

“This hand says you spend the rest of your life with me," he said, holding out his left hand, "and this one says I spend the rest of my life with you. Choose."

She bit her lip, tears welling in her eyes. She took both of his hands in hers and he shuddered. "I will die protecting you," he says.

There was a look of dismay on her face. "Just like a man of this kingdom, Finnikin. Talking of death, yours or mine, is not a good way to begin a-"

Isaboe gave a small gasp when he leaned forward, his lips an inch away from hers. "I will die for you," he whispered.

She cupped his face in her hands. "But promise me you'll live for me first, my love. Because nothing we are about to do is going to be easy and I need you by my side.”
― Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock

“Good is not a thing you are. It's a thing you do.”
― Kamala Khan

“Part of what we are is whom we’ve loved.”
― Parke Godwin, Firelord

“No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.” It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about “us.” But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).”
― Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“People grow when they are loved well. If you want to help others heal, love them without an agenda.”
― Mike McHargue

“The Bible is a remarkable document,” he mused. “It can be interpreted many ways, and reveals as much about whoever reads it as it does about the Book itself.”
― Eva Leigh, Temptations of a Wallflower

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”
― Lynda Barry

“One of the major dilemmas inherent in the attempt by black people to break through the cultural aspects of white imperialism is that posed by the use of historical knowledge as a weapon in our struggle. We are virtually forced into the invidious position of proving our humanity by citing historical antecedents; and yet the evidence is too often submitted to the white racists for sanction. The white man has already implanted numerous historical myths in the minds of black peoples; and those have to be uprooted . . . It is necessary to direct our historical activity in the light of two basic principles[:]

Firstly, the effort must be directed solely towards freeing and mobilising black minds. There must be no performances to impress whites, for those whites who find themselves beside us in the firing line will be there for reasons far more profound than their exposure to African history.

Secondly, the acquired knowledge of African history must be seen as directly relevant but secondary to the concrete tactics and strategy which are necessary for our liberation. There must be no false distinctions between reflection and action . . .

If there is to be any proving of our humanity it must be by revolutionary means.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”
― Frantz Fanon

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Marianne, he said, I'm not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“And when you'd finished running you'd be thousands of miles away from people who love you and your problem would still be there except you'd have nobody to help you.”
― Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi

“These are feminists who would say, in the words of former political prisoner Susan Saxe, “My feminism does not drive me into the arms of the state, but even further from it.”
― Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

“the oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“Too many people in the U.S. support death and destruction without being aware of it. They indirectly support the killing our people without ever having to look at the corpses”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
― Vaclav Havel

“The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.”
― Arundhati Roy

“It [i.e. disability justice] means we are not left behind; we are beloved, kindred, needed.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

“I may not find joy every day. Some days will just be hard, and I will simply exist, and that’s okay, too. No one should have to be happy all the time—no one can be, with the ways in which life throws curveballs at us. On those days, it’s important not to mourn the lack of joy but to remember how it feels, to remember that to feel at all is one of the greatest gifts we have in life. When that doesn’t work, we can remind ourselves that the absence of joy isn’t permanent; it’s just the way life works sometimes. The reality of disability and joy means accepting that not every day is good but every day has openings for small pockets of joy.”
― Alice Wong, Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century

“It got worse still as time went on because people did not sympathize with you any more. They couldn't do enough for you at first, and that helped, and then they got bored with your troubles. But your troubles went on just the same and you had to bear them alone.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, The Scent of Water