Our Shared Shelf Quotes

“To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Go," she whispered. "Go. Show them you spell your name W-O-M-A-N.”
― Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom

“love is not cruel
we are cruel
love is not a game
we have made a game
out of love”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“The choice to love is a choice to connect--- to find ourselves in the other.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Embracing love ethic means that we utilize all dimensions of love-- "care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect and knowledge"-- in our everyday lives.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Love empowers us to live fully and die well. Death becomes, then, not an end to life but a part of living.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Being loving does not mean we will not be betrayed. Love helps up face betrayal without losing heart. And it renews our spirit so we can love again.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“All awakening to love is spiritual awakening”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“I think true love transcends tiem. The thunderbolt does not. Not if it strkes men the way you described."
I start a sprint toward a glade where my favorite orange flowers grow. He catches up with me easily.
"Most girls prefer flowers over trees." I brush my fingers on the petals."These flowers blossom quickly. They speak of passion, of beauty." I take a witheting flower that had dropped to the ground and fondle it between my fingers. "But flowers don't last. They wither easily and have limited growth. A tree might not speak of passion but sturdiness. Yet, it grows higher and lasts longer. Some of these trees were here before I was born and they'll be here once I'm gone."
My heads falls back as I look at the highest tree. "Real love ought to be more like a tree and less like a flower. That's the kind of love my parents had. It wasn't as consuming as it was everlasting. And you see that tree over there? Now it's showing only green leaves, but in spring it's covered in flowers. Because as reliable as trees are, they can also speak of beauty and passion.”
― Mya Robarts

“Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Love allows us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life enhancing.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“There's no reason to assume that all men are bad. Not even all the soldiers are monsters.”
― Mya Robarts, The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story

“Self-acceptance is hard for many of us. There is a voice inside that is constantly judging, first ourselves and then others.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Spirituality and spiritual life gives us the strength to love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Women understand that there are two distinct economies: There is physical attraction, and then there is the “ideal.” When a woman looks at a man, she can physically dislike the idea of his height, his coloring, his shape. But after she has liked him and loved him, she would not want him to look any other way: For many women, the body appears to grow beautiful and erotic as they grow to like the person in it. The actual body, the smell, the feel, the voice and movement, becomes charged with heat through the desirable person who animates it. Even Gertrude Stein said of Picasso, “There was nothing especially attractive about him at first sight…but his radiance, an inner fire one sensed in him, gave him a sort of magnetism I was unable to resist.” By the same token, a woman can admire a man as a work of art but lose sexual interest if he turns out to be an idiot.
What becomes of the man who acquires a beautiful woman, with her “beauty” his sole target? He sabotages himself. He has gained no friend, no ally, no mutual trust: She knows quite well why she has been chosen. He has succeeded in buying a mutually suspicious set of insecurities. He does gain something: the esteem of other men who find such an acquisition impressive.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

“A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well.”
― bell hooks

“To bring a love ethic to every dimension of our lives, our society would need to embrace change.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“I learned then that it is more fulfilling to live one's life within a circle of love, interacting with loved ones to whom we are committed.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“To maintain and satisfy greed, one must support domination. And the world of domination is always a world without love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“True forgiveness requires that we understand the negative actions of another.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“I learned then that it is more fulfilling to live one's life within a circle of love, interacting with loved ones to whole we are committed.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“In truth, true love is all about work.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Erotic attention often serves as the catalyst for an intimate connection between two people, but it is not a sign of love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Rescuing girls from brothels is the easy part, however. The challenge is keeping them from returning. The stigma that girls feel in their communities after being freed, coupled with drug dependencies or threats from pimps, often lead to return to the re-light district.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“If we succeed without confronting and changing shaking foundation of low self-esteem rooted in contempt of hatred, we will falter along the way.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“To live fully we would need to let go of our fear of dying.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Discipline and devotion are necessary to the practice of love, all the more so when relationships are just beginning.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“In the ‘Broken Windows’ theory, if a single broken window on an empty building is ignored, and not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may break into the building, and light fires, or become squatters.

When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York in 1993, his belief in the ‘Broken Windows’ theory led him to implement the ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy. Crime dropped dramatically, significantly, and continued to for the next ten years. Personally, I feel the time has come for women to introduce their own Zero Tolerance policy on the Broken Window issues in
our lives – I want a Zero Tolerance policy on ‘All The Patriarchal Bullshit’. And the great thing about a Zero Tolerance policy on Patriarchal Broken Windows Bullshit is this: in the 21st century, we
don’t need to march against size zero models, risible pornography, lap-dancing clubs and Botox. We don’t need to riot, or go on hunger strike. There’s no need to throw ourselves under a horse, or even a donkey. We just need to look it in the eye, squarely, for a minute, and then start laughing at it. We look hot when we laugh. People fancy us when they observe us giving out relaxed, earthy chuckles. ~”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“Our lives hang on narrative thread. . . Our world is shaped by the stories we tell ourselves -- what we believe about our lives and what we hold to be true about our world.”
― Sandra Marinella, The Story You Need to Tell: Writing to Heal from Trauma, Illness, or Loss