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#1

“When I was younger, thinking about whether I wanted children, I always came back to this formula: if no one had told me anything about the world, I would have invented boyfriends. I would have invented sex, friendship, art. I would not have invented child-rearing.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

tags: child-rearing, children, feminism

16 likes

#2

“She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer of silt that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which, taking root, would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound had begun to heal from within.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

1 likes

#3

“You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.”
― Tove Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley

327 likes

#4

“I have never been out of my own land before. And if I had known what the world outside was like, I don't think I should have had the heart to leave it.'
'Not even to see fair Lothlorien?' said Haldir. 'The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

25 likes

#5

“What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.”
― Marcel Duchamp

38 likes

#6

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
― Gustav Flaubert

tags: writing-life

1675 likes

#7

“It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar.”
― Anais Nin

120 likes

#8

“There is something threatening about a woman who is not occupied with children. There is something at-loose-ends feeling about such a woman. What is she going to do instead? What sort of trouble will she make?”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

55 likes

#9

“Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

8 likes

#10

“Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

tags: dolly

15 likes

#11

“Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult each one another.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

tags: anna-karenina, contempt, relationships

12 likes

#12

“In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

8 likes

#13

“Every man, knowing to the smallest detail all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, involuntarily assumes that the complexity of these conditions and the difficulty of comprehending them are only his personal, accidental peculiarity, and never thinks that others are surrounded by the same complexity as he is.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

15 likes

#14

“Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

tags: insight, perseverance, strength

16 likes

#15

“She saw that they felt themselves alone in that crowded room. And Vronsky’s face, always so firm and independent, held that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it has done wrong.

Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful, and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was enchanting in her simple black dress, enchanting were her round arms with their bracelets, enchanting was her firm neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, enchanting the graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, enchanting was that lovely face in its animation, but there was something terrible and cruel about her charm.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

12 likes

#16

“And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

324 likes

#17

“Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last—it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

tags: death, mortality

108 likes

#18

“Can’t good come around sometimes through some strange back doors?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

98 likes

#19

“small, everyday things can lift us out of despair. But nobody can do it for you. You’re the one who has to watch for the open door.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

26 likes

#20

“To paint, to write, to engage in politics—these are not merely ‘sublimations’; here we have aims that are willed for their own sakes. To deny it is to falsify all human history.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

20 likes

#21

“Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

5 likes

#22

“And I don’t want ‘not a mother’ to be part of who I am- for my identity to be the negative of someone else’s positive identity. Then maybe instead of being ‘not a mother’ I could be not ‘not a mother.’ I could be not not.
If I am not not, then I am what I am. The negative cancels out the negative and I simply am. I am what I positively am, for the not before the not shields me from being simply not a mother. And to those who would say, You’re not a mother, I would reply, ‘In fact, I am not not a mother.’ By which I mean I am not ‘not a mother.’ Yet someone who is called a mother could also say, ‘In fact, I am not not a mother.’ Which means she is a mother, for the not cancels our the not. To be not not is what the mothers can be, and what the women who are not mothers can be. This is the term we can share. In this way, we can be the same (157-58).”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

12 likes

#23

“Why do we write? A chorus erupts.
Because we cannot simply live.”
― Patti Smith, Devotion

tags: devotion, life, patti-smith, poetry, writing

46 likes

#24

“Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly. Let but the future be opened to her, and she will no longer be compelled to linger in the present.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

72 likes

#25

“You’re not really mad that I’m not having children.

In fact, I would probably love to one day.

You’re mad that I’m expressing autonomy of choice.

You’re mad that I’m considering other options.

You’re mad that I don’t view that as my ultimate potential.

You’re mad that I dare be selfish enough to make choices based on my best interest, something women are not supposed to do.

You’re mad that I consider it a choice, and that I, a woman, am exercising choice.

You’re not mad that I’m not having babies.

You’re mad because I’m acting like a man.”
― Alice Minium

tags: childfree, feminism, heteronormativity, pro-choice, pro-choice-quotes, reproductive-justice, reproductive-rights, womens-rights

27 likes

#26

“The fact that the person who you are sleeping with is also sleeping with another person or other people does not necessarily mean that he or she does not love you. And the fact that you are the only person who someone is sleeping with does not necessarily mean that he or she loves you.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

tags: adage, adages, africa, african, aphorism, aphorisms, axiom, axioms, boyfriend, boyfriends, cheat, cheater, cheaters, cheating, deep, dictum, dictums, epigram, epigrams, extramarital, faithful, faithfulness, fidelity, foreplay, funny, girlfriend, girlfriends, gnome, gnomes, hate, hatred, humor, humorous, humour, husband, husbands, infidelity, insightful, kama-sutra, kamasutra, love, lover, lovers, loyal, loyalty, made-me-think, make-you-think, marriage, marriages, maxim, maxims, monogamous, monogamy, philosopher, play, played, player, polygamous, polygamy, profound, promiscuity, promiscuous, proverb, proverbs, provoke-thought, quotation, quotations, quote, quote-of-the-day, quotes, relationship, relationships, satire, satirical, saying, sayings, sex, sex-position, sex-positions, sexual-intercourse, sleep-with, slut, sluttish, south-africa, south-african, spouse, spouses, thought-provoking, thoughtful, two-time, two-timer, two-timers, two-timing, wife, wives

19 likes

#27

“My childhood was so inconsistent that I never expected normalcy, and it’s enough for me to be able to have time and space to be good to myself and the people around me. Children are nice, but I decided to save myself instead.”
― Meghan Daum, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids

2 likes

#28

“I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.”
― Audrey Hepburn

689 likes

#29

“The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.”
― Shannon L. Alder

tags: acceptance, actions, beliefs, common-sense, confusion, disbelief, evidence, faith, family, hoping, life-purpose, love, mixed-signals, obvious, outrage, proof, reality, religion, sorrow, timing, truth, unrequited-love

729 likes

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