Caroline > Caroline's Quotes

“I asked her if she believed in love, and she smiled and said it was her most elaborate method of self-harm.”
― Benedict Smith

“We must honor our differences while we find our own courage and our own strength the best we know how.”
― Jennifer Roy, Yellow Star

“If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their own lives, but will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgement at those of us trying to dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fear-mongering. If you're criticizing from a place where you're not also putting yourself on the line, I'm not interested in your feedback.”
― Brené Brown

“Being on the spectrum does not, in any way, mean that a woman or a girl is destined to be in an abusive relationship. Not at all. On the contrary, being aware that she is different and of the ways that she is different is the cornerstone to knowing how to empower her. What to teach her to watch for. What to teach her to cherish. To know, above all, that yes, like everyone in the world, there are things she can do and ways she must grow to be the best friend and partner she can be. And before she looks outward, she needs to know herself. Needs to know that without exception, she is believed. That even when her perspective is limited or her reactions feel extreme to others, they are entirely authentic and real for her. That we will honor and love her for them, not in spite of them. More than a promise, that’s a responsibility.”
― Jennifer O'Toole, Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum

“Cutting. Starving. Compulsive exercising. Drinking. Drugs. Hair pulling. Skin picking. These are not attention-grabbing strategies, or else why would we, who employ them, work so very hard to keep our behaviors secret? They are evidence of poor coping skills. Of terrible anxiety. Of invalidation and loneliness—and shame. Manifestations of anxiety and cognitive rigidity to the point of epidemic levels. Why? It’s all about relief. About trying to escape from your own feelings and experiences of the world that those of us on the spectrum are constantly told are wrong.”
― Jennifer O'Toole, Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum

“Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness, on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness is what happens when no one’s looking.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“It’s not always enough to go looking for the place we belong. Sometimes we need to make that place.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall. I can’t step off the ledge for you. It’s something only you can do.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Danger rarely wore a monstrous face and a wielded a pitchfork. No, danger came most often in the form of nice people whose niceness only went so deep, who saved their niceness for people exactly like them, who believed they were more deserving of power and respect than anyone who was a little bit different.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Trust is earned."
"It is. But that’s only possible if someone’s willing to give you a chance.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“I can’t transform the world, Jamie. The world’s too big and too messy and too stubborn.”
“Who said anything about transforming the world?” He shrugged. “What about just making it a little better? And then a little better? And then a little more, until, one day, maybe long after we’re gone, it has transformed?”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Alone is how—”
“—is how we survive, yes, you’ve said. I can’t say whether that’s true or not, but one thing I do know is that alone is not how we live.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Torma means “offering cake.” You offer the torma to your don. You feed the ghost that does you harm, “that which possesses you.” Giving it a little something sweet is a way of saying, Thank you for the pain you caused me, because that pain woke me up. It hurt enough to make me change. “Wish for more pain,” a friend’s therapist once told her, “because that’s how you’ll change.” It has to hurt so much that you have to do something differently. The pain forces your hand.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves–all of our selves–wherever we go.
Inside forty-something me is the woman I was in my thirties, the woman I was in my twenties, the teenager I was, the child I was.
Inside divorced me: married me, the me who loved my husband, the me who believed what we had was irrevocable and permanent, the me who believed in permanence.
I still carry these versions of myself. It's a kind of reincarnation without death: all these different lives we get to live in this one body, as ourselves.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“This is what it is to be rooted in a place, or to have a place rooted inside you: Every bit means something to someone you know, and therefore, every bit means something to you.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“Likewise, parents are not wise oracles—they’re just people trying to shepherd other people through the world. We may know the right path to take, but knowing the way and consistently walking it are two different things. Everything we learn, we learn from someone who is imperfect.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“Here’s the thing: Betrayal is neat. It absolves you from having to think about your own failures, the ways you didn’t show up for your partner, the harm you might have done.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“The best things to happen to me individually were the worst things to happen to my marriage. And then, this: But the best things remain.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“I wanted to save my marriage, but I wanted to save it without anyone knowing it needed saving. That is some serious firstborn-daughter energy right there.”
― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”
― George Eliot