TiredAF Human Condition > TiredAF's Quotes

“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“He doesn’t understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you’ve done, but from the things that others have done to you.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“...for it is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.
Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women
Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers
Runnng through caverns of darkness...”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The courtship of Miles Standish, and other poems

“Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”
― Malcom X

“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone...”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent
itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmostphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.”
― Audrey Lorde

“To whom do I owe the power behind my voice, what strength I have become, yeasting up like sudden blood from under the bruised skin's blister?
My father leaves his psychic print upon me, silent, intense, and unforgiving. But his is a distant lightning. Images of women flaming like torches adorn and define the borders of my journey, stand like dykes between me and the chaos. It is the images of women, kind and cruel, that lead me home.”
― Audre Lorde

“Writers give readers courage – the courage to be utterly your complete and complex self.

(In reference to Audre Lorde)”
― Jackie Kay

“The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need—the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfillment.”
― Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

“While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me--drawing on my skin--not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. It's like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.

And inside the peach there's a stone.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“Because you may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone; and there are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“He doesn't understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“When I was younger I used to think that if I could hug myself tight enough I could make myself smaller, because there was never enough room for me, at home or anywhere, but if I was smaller then I would fit in.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“To go from a familiar thing, however undesirable, into the unknown, is always a matter for apprehension, and I suppose that is why so many people are afraid to die.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“...the difference between stupid and ignorant was that ignorant could learn.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“Mary: Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“And then everything went on very quietly for a fortnight, says Dr. Jordan. He is reading aloud from my confession.
Yes Sir, it did, I say. More or less quietly.
What is everything? How did it go on?
I beg your pardon, Sir?
What did you do everyday?
Oh, the usual, Sir, I say. I performed my duties.
You will forgive me, says Dr. Jordan. Of what did those duties consist?
I look at him. He is wearing a yellow cravat with small white squares, he is not making a joke. He really does not know. Men such as him do not have to clean up the messes they make, but we have to clean up our own messes, and theirs into the bargain. In that way they are like children, they do not have to think ahead, or worry about the consequences of what they do. But it's not their fault, it is only how they are brought up.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“This puts him in an instructive mood, and I can see he is going to teach me something, which gentlemen are fond of doing.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“...I was shut up inside that doll of myself and my true voice could not get out.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile. Thus”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“The truth is I don’t want him watching me while I eat. I don’t want him to see my hunger. If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. He”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“What mysteries remain to be revealed in the nervous system, that web of structures both material and ethereal, that network of threads that runs throughout the body, composed of a thousand Ariadne’s clues, all leading to the brain, that shadowy central den where the human bones lie scattered and the monsters lurk”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace