Amber > Amber's Quotes

“A bond has its own challenges—there can still be disagreement—but at least all parties want the same outcome.”
― Jay Shetty, Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Everyday

“So humanity is not the helpless plaything of a dead mechanism, but its development consists precisely in the growing power of the human mind over the dead mechanism of nature. But - and this is only said by historical materialism - the human spirit develops from, with and out of the material mode of production. The human mind is not the father of the mode of production, but the mode of production is the mother of the human mind.”
― Franz Mehring, On historical materialism

“Nostalgia is a powerful tool of ignorance and retrenchment of the social order.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Serious love. We need what Jesus called neighbor love. We need what Martin Luther King, Jr., called redemptive love. We need what Toni Morrison called self love. We need what bell hooks called committed love. We need what Kiese Laymon calls responsible love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“She came here because I made her feel better or because she wanted to talk to me about it. Because she was spinning in a tornado and the only time she feels still is when she’s with me. And then it occurred to me. I was her person. Me. I couldn’t adequately put into words the way this made me feel. It wasn’t in her DNA to let someone else take care of her. I knew because it wasn’t in mine either. We were the rocks in our family, always putting the needs of everyone else before our own, so I knew what it meant that she let me be there for her.”
― Abby Jimenez, Life's Too Short

“Writing was a way for me to stop running and stop wounding and start healing.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“and so mankind only posed for itself such tasks as it could solve. Looked at more closely, as Marx explains, it will be found that the task only arises where the material conditions for its solution are already in existence, or at least in the process of becoming.”
― Franz Mehring, On historical materialism

“Their faith was not a destination; it was a discipline.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Jesus stands as one who knew economic, political, and religious violence but also as one who formed people in the way of resistance, dignity, power, justice, and love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“We speak. We write. We do language. That is how we heal when our bodies bend and break. That is how the world heals when it is bruised. That is how I healed.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I felt that the only way I could make sense of my feelings was to begin to do what so many Black people before me did: write. Writing became a way for me to feel free and a way for me to feel like I wasn't crazy and a way to feel like what I was doing was contributing to the struggle. I knew that I couldn't be out on the streets and I knew that I couldn't change any legislation, but what I could do is give voice to our suffering.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Rage has a way of making us stand up. Of freeing us from fear. Rage made me stop running, and it made me stop lying. Soon, rage would put my faith bath together in all the ways it was shattered.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Rage liberated me from my lies and gave me the courage to see anew the preset and the future.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Black rage is the work of love that protests an unloving world.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“Dangers and wilderness go hand in hand. That is part of the attraction of wilderness, and danger is part of the allure”
― Lee H. Whittlesey, Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park

“Truth is the beginning of liberation. It is the beginning of what we really want for ourselves as humans. It is what we are encouraged to be and become in our faith traditions. It is the beginning of life. Giving up our lies so that we can really love.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“if I don’t laugh, I’ll spend the rest of my life crying,”
― Abby Jimenez, Life's Too Short

“The small sounds of the birds in the trees were a reminder that there was more than just us. That life carried on in ways that had nothing to do with our human lives.”
― Mariana Zapata, All Rhodes Lead Here

“I also see people who know what it means to live with deep trauma and still love themselves enough to believe in their future.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“As I read the Hebrew Bible, I am struck by two main verbs that refer to waiting. One is to wait with expectation; the other is to wait in the tension of enduring. It is not passive. It is an active struggle to live in the face of despair.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“I didn't want to feel anything. But I knew I must feel everything.”
― Danté Stewart, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

“God invites us to take the risk of love.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith

“God became vulnerable. I can't help but read the story this way. God was humbled, choosing to put down roots in a particular family at a particular time in a particular place.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith

“But a radical new body of evidence shows that people are at their best—physically harder, mentally tougher, and spiritually sounder—after experiencing the same discomforts our early ancestors were exposed to every day. Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.”
― Michael Easter, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

“The testers found that training attention not only improved executive control; scores on nonverbal tests of intelligence also improved and the improvement was maintained for several months. Other research by the same group identified specific genes that are involved in the control of attention, showed that parenting techniques also affected this ability, and demonstrated a close connection between the children’s ability to control their attention and their ability to control their emotions.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“Hope is a dangerous emotion. Sometimes it fulfills us, and sometimes, it kills us.”
― Kristy Marie, The Potter

“Faithfulness to Jesus means that I must step out even when and where I can’t see anything (see Matthew 14: 29). But faithfulness to my own ideas means that I first clear the way mentally. Faith, however, is not intellectual understanding; faith is a deliberate commitment to the Person of Jesus Christ, even when I can’t see the way ahead. Are you debating whether you should take a step of faith in Jesus, or whether you should wait until you can clearly see how to do what He has asked? Simply obey Him with unrestrained joy. When He tells you something and you begin to debate, it is because you have a misunderstanding of what honors Him and what doesn’t. Are you faithful to Jesus, or faithful to your ideas about Him? Are you faithful to what He says, or are you trying to compromise His words with thoughts that never came from Him? “Whatever He says to you, do it” (John 2: 5).”
― Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

“Writing didn’t carry the same risks as speaking. You couldn’t be shouted down or stared at. The page was both a proxy and a shield.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mime Order

“Thankfully, it is our cognitive capability and not our phonology that allows us, as humans, to reason, to analyze, and to solve problems at the very highest levels—and to be capable of great accomplishment.”
― Sally E. Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia (2020 Edition): Second Edition, Completely Revised and Updated

“To tease someone is a sign of intimacy and friendship, to know that there is a reservoir of affection from which we all drink as funny and flawed humans. And yet their jokes were as much about themselves as about each other, never really putting the other down, but constantly reinforcing their bond and their friendship.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World