Ashley > Ashley's Quotes

“Discover why you’re important, then refuse to settle for anyone who doesn’t completely agree.”
― Fisher Amelie, Thomas & January

“I am not the sum of lovers I had or never had. As for lovers who left, consider them hair. Sometimes you cut it off for it to grow longer and more beautiful (but that doesn’t mean you hate pictures of yourself with it). Even after lovers you remain Beautiful.”
― Tapiwa Mugabe, Zimbabwe

“Sometimes goodness comes from treating yourself. Not like you burned earth to dust but like you made it into a beautiful body crowned it with stars, put a precious coat over it and called it home.”
― Tapiwa Mugabe, Zimbabwe

“would you still want to travel to that country if you could not take a camera with you. – a question of appropriation”
― Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

“decolonization requires acknowledging. that your needs and desires should never come at the expense of another’s life energy. it is being honest that you have been spoiled by a machine that is not feeding you freedom but feeding you the milk of pain. – the release”
― Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

“i have lost millions and millions
of words to fear.
tell me that is not violence.

- the deaths”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

“In America we saw more food than we had seen in all our lives and we were so happy we rummaged through the dustbins of our souls to retrieve the stained, broken pieces of God.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“to not be safe on the earth. simply because of the color of your skin. how does a being survive this. – trayvon martin”
― Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

“The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.”
― Martin Buber

“We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.”
― Martin Buber

“And if there were a devil it would not be one who decided against God, but one who, in eternity, came to no decision. ”
― Martin Buber, I and Thou

“Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.”
― Martin Buber

“For God does not want to be believed in, to be debated and defended by us, but simply to be realized through us.”
― Martin Buber, On Judaism

“When you spread forth your hands, I hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers, I no longer listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Is that too little?”
― Martin Buber

“Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever."

[Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]”
― Toni Morrison

“You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right -- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can't even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, beacuse the clouds let him; they don't wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.”
― Toni Morrison

“She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?”
― Toni Morrison

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”
― Toni Morrison

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”
― Audre Lorde

“in the slow motion that is the speed of humiliation.”
― Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor

“As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.”
― Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“The way love can disregard fears, however, is an age-old wonder. No fear is able to spoil love's development or keep it from dreaming of its appointed hour.”
― Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk

“...love is like health. It is taken lightly when present and cherished when it departs.”
― Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk

“There is not a man in the world who is worth your dignity. Do not confuse self-sacrifice with love.”
― J. Nozipo Maraire, Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter

“To love is a beautiful, mysterious event; do not miss it. Be neither too cautious nor too absorbed. Too many of us reason with our heart and experience with our heads.”
― J. Nozipo Maraire, Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter

“Welcome, my dear, to the Western world, land of democracy, freedom, and bigotry.”
― J. Nozipo Maraire, Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter

“Until we begin to put pen to paper, we historically do not exist.”
― J. Nozipo Maraire, Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter

“Racism is a phenomenal thing; it is like a thick mist that obscures the vision and judgement of even great minds.”
― J. Nozipo Maraire, Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter