Bri

“I'd be content if I could ever make anybody consider the grand, illuminated procession of which they are a part: the larger story of their cultures, legacies, and dreams. Too often we see each other in instrumental terms, as opposed to Kant's ideal of seeing each human being in light of his or her intrinsic value.”
― Jennifer Gavin, Dear Students: Reading, Writing, and the Art of Smelling Books

“Shamelessness, like shame, is not a masculine condition. That is, there is no shameless man as there is a shameless woman or, as my grandmother used to say, a shameless hussy. A man without shame is in general assumed to simply have done nothing he need feel guilty about. A woman without shame is a strumpet, a trollop, a whore, a witch. These connotations have been immemorially sexual....My sexuality has been the single most powerful disruptive force mankind has ever perceived, and its repression has been the work of centuries.”
― Nancy Mairs

“To William H. Gass's argument, "To have written an autobiography is already to have made yourself a monster," I say that refusing to write your story can make you into a monster. Or perhaps more accurately, we are already monsters. And to deny the monstrous is to deny its beauty, its meaning, and its devastation.”
― Melissa Febos, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

“See yourself not as the protagonist of your own heroic journey but instead as a collaborator in a massive, sprawling human epic.”
― John Green