Cathy > Cathy's Quotes

“You are a mystery I promise I will never try to solve.”
― Andrea Gibson, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

“Our insanity is not that we see people who aren’t there. It’s that we ignore the ones who are.”
― Andrea Gibson

“Safety isn't always safe. You can find one on every gun.”
― Andrea Gibson

“...And for every day you paint the war, take a week and paint the beauty, the color, the shape of the landscape you’re marching towards. Everyone knows what you’re against; show them what you’re for.”
― Andrea Gibson

“When we touch the place in our lives where sexuality and spirituality come together, we touch our wholeness and the fullness of our power, and at the same time our connection with a power larger than ourselves.”
― Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.”
― Mary Oliver

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
― Mary Oliver

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”
― Mary Oliver

“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.”
― Mary Oliver

“Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.”
― Rita Mae Brown

“I had never thought I had much in common with anybody. I had no mother, no father, no roots, no biological similarities called sisters and brothers. And for a future I didn't want a split-level home with a station wagon, pastel refrigerator, and a houseful of blonde children evenly spaced through the years. I didn't want to walk into the pages of McCall's magazine and become the model housewife. I didn't even want a husband or any man for that matter. I wanted to go my own way. That's all I think I ever wanted, to go my own way and maybe find some love here and there. Love, but not the now and forever kind with chains around your vagina and a short circuit in your brain. I'd rather be alone.”
― Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle

“While self-interest arising from the enjoyment of meat eating is obviously one reason for its entrenchment, and inertia another, a process of language usage engulfs discussions about meat by constructing the discourse in such a way that these issues need never be addressed. Language distances us from the reality of meat eating, thus reinforcing the symbolic meaning of meat eating, a symbolic meaning that is intrinsically patriarchal and male-oriented. Meat becomes a symbol for what is not seen but is always there--patriarchal control of animals and of language.”
― Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory

“Your silence will not protect you.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
― Audre Lorde

“The longstanding effort to "colorize" feminist theory by inserting the experiences of women of color represents at best genuine efforts to reduce bias in Women's Studies. But at its worst, colorization also contains elements of both voyeurism and academic colonialism. As a result of new technologies and perceived profitability, we can now watch black-and-white movie classics in color. While the tinted images we are offered may be more palatable to the modern viewer, we are still watching the same old movie that was offered to us before. Movie colorization adds little of substance-its contributions remain cosmetic. Similarly, women of color allegedly can teach White feminists nothing about feminism, but must confine ourselves to "colorizing" preexisting feminist theory. Rather than seeing women of color as fully human individuals, we are treated as the additive sum of our categories.”
― Patricia Hill Collins, On Intellectual Activism

“A Word is Dead

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“But the best part of the evening was that there were whole hours when we sat around the fire pit and didn’t say a word. We were together as a group, but they knew I needed silence. That can be very hard for friends.”
― Robin Roberts, Everybody's Got Something

“And I think it’s often very hard for close friends to understand that sometimes you want them to be there but you don’t have to say anything, that their presence is as powerful as anything else.”
― Robin Roberts, Everybody's Got Something

“When you are down and you don’t know how to pick yourself up, start where you are. I can hear Pat’s voice saying the words in my head, “Left foot, right foot, breathe.”
― Robin Roberts, Everybody's Got Something

“I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘it hurts to become.”
― Andrea Gibson

“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.”
― Shirley Chisholm

“I am and always will be a catalyst for change.”
― Shirley Chisholm

“Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster. ”
― Shirley Chisholm

“I call people sometimes hoping not only that they’ll verify the fact that I’m alive but that they’ll also, however indirectly, convince me that being alive is an appropriate state for me to be in. Because sometimes I don’t think it’s such a bright idea. Is it worth the trouble it takes trying to live life so that someday you get something worthwhile out of it, instead of it almost always taking worthwhile things out of you?”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

“I need to write. It keeps me focused for long enough to complete thoughts. To let each train of thought run to its conclusion and let a new one begin. It keeps me thinking. I’m afraid that if I stop writing I’ll stop thinking and start feeling.”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

“I act like someone in a bomb shelter trying to raise everyone’s spirits.”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

“Vultures are difficult to charm unless you’re off somewhere rotting in the noonday sun. Casually rotting…a glib cadaver.”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

“I could charm the birds out of everyone's trees but his”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

“What’s the riddle? Me talking so much And saying so little”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

“Kidding yourself doesn’t require that you have a sense of humor. But a sense of humor comes in handy for almost everything else.”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist