sanjoli > sanjoli's Quotes

“I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?”
― Mary Oliver, House of Light

“West Wind #2

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable
pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life
toward it.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“Here is an amazement—once I was twenty years old and in every motion of my body there was a delicious ease, and in every motion of the green earth there was a hint of paradise, and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not together.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another — why don’t you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,

I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing—the reason they can fly.”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity

“There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled. Like, telling someone you love them. Or giving your money away, all of it. Your heart is beating, isn’t it? You’re not in chains, are you? There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own.”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity

“Everything that was broken has
forgotten its brokenness. I live
now in a sky-house, through every
window the sun. Also your presence.
Our touching, our stories. Earthy
and holy both. How can this be, but
it is. Every day has something in
it whose name is Forever.”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity

“Not anyone who says "I'm going to be
careful and smart in the matters of love,"
who says, "I'm going to choose slowly,"
but only those lovers who didn't choose at all
but were, as it were, chosen
by something invisible
and powerful and uncontrollable
and beautiful and possibly even
unsuitable--
only those know what I'm talking about
in this talking about love.”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity: Poems

“If you’re John Muir you want trees to
live among. If you’re Emily, a garden
will do.
Try to find the right place for yourself.
If you can’t find it, at least dream of it.

When one is alone and lonely, the body
gladly lingers in the wind or the rain,
or splashes into the cold river, or
pushes through the ice-crusted snow.

Anything that touches.

God, or the gods, are invisible, quite
understandable. But holiness is visible,
entirely.”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity

“Where has this cold come from?
“It comes from the death of your friend.”

Will I always, from now on, be this cold?
“No, it will diminish. But always it will be with you.”

What is the reason for it?
“Wasn’t your friendship always as beautiful as a flame?”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity

“All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. • To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.”
― Mary Oliver, Felicity

“I have always been disturbed by this transition, by the reality that often the only way to capture someone’s attention and to encourage them to recognize their own internal biases (and to work to alter them) is to confront them with sensational stories of suffering. Why is my humanity only seen or cared about when I share the ways in which I have been victimized and violated?”
― Vivek Shraya , I'm Afraid of Men.

“I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear the word girl by turning it into a weapon they used to hurt me. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to hate and eventually destroy my femininity. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear the extraordinary parts of myself”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“Sexist comments, intimidation, groping, violating boundaries, and aggression are merely seen as "typical" for men. But "typical" is dangerously interchangeable with "acceptable".”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“Queerness is associated with freedom from boundaries.”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“Falling in love with another human is terrifying. As our language insists, romantic love is always preceded by a fall, the necessity of losing control and potentially hurting yourself in the process of connecting with another”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“But your fear is not only hurting me, it's hurting you, limiting you from being everything you could be. Consider how often you have dismissed your own appearance, behaviours, emotions, and aspirations for being too feminine or masculine. What might your life be if you didn't impose these designations on yourself, let alone on me?”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“How cruel it is to have endured two decades of being punished for being too girly only to be told that I am now not girly enough.”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“The disdain for women and femininity is insidious, infecting even those who profess to love women, and it takes many forms.”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“The saddest part of the night is when I peel my bindi off my forehead and let it fly into the wind a symbolic parting with a piece of myself.”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“So now I’ve decided to privilege women, in the books I read, the films I watch, the culture I imbibe, and in my close friendships, so that men just aren’t that important any more. Instead I privilege this sisterhood, which is so supportive, which nourishes me – in my creativity, my radicalism, my thinking both about myself and about society – in so many areas of my life, where, I’ve finally realised, I have no need of men to shape the person I am.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“The accusation of misandry is a mechanism for silencing women, a way of silencing the anger – sometimes violent but always legitimate – of the oppressed standing up to their oppressors. Taking offence at misandry, claiming it’s merely a form of sexism like any other, and no less unacceptable (as if sexism were genuinely reviled), is a bad-faith way of sweeping under the carpet the mechanisms that make sexist oppression a systemic phenomenon buoyed throughout history by culture and authority. It’s to allege that a woman who hates men is as dangerous as a man who hates women – and that there’s no rational justification for what she feels, be it dislike, distrust or disdain. Because, obviously, no man has ever hurt a woman in the whole course of human history. Or rather, no men have ever hurt any women.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“I use the word misandry to mean a negative feeling towards the entirety of the male sex. This negative feeling might be understood as a spectrum that ranges from simple suspicion to outright loathing, and is generally expressed by an impatience towards men and a rejection of their presence in women’s spaces. And when I say ‘the male sex’ I mean all the cis men who have been socialised as such, and who enjoy their male privilege without ever calling it into question, or not enough (yes, misandry is a demanding and elitist concept).”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Only someone in a position of dominance can permit himself to be calm and reasonable in any circumstance, because he’s not the one who is suffering.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Standards are very low for men, and far too high for women. Let’s reserve ourselves the right to be ugly, badly dressed, vulgar, mean, bad-tempered, untidy, exhausted, selfish, incompetent …”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Thoughts are often false. A feeling's always real. Not true, just real”
― Susan Choi, Trust Exercise

“To David, love meant declaration. Wasn't that the whole point? To Sarah, love meant a shared secret. Wasn't that the whole point?”
― Susan Choi, Trust Exercise

“And right away her gaze went hard with the anger we always feel at the person who spoils our idea of ourself.”
― Susan Choi, Trust Exercise