Shell S.

“Unlike being nice, kindness is not about what you're portraying, but what you're doing...applying actual love to make the world a better place. Sure, you may smile nicely at the old woman on the bus, but kindness is what makes you give up your seat for her.... Niceness is a mask many folks can wear because that is simply a part of being in a society. ... The pretend politeness of niceness can get in the way of tactful honesty and constructive critique that can be essential to advancing people and projects to a higher plane. As I've gotten older, I've learned that being 'nice' about something can save you conflict, but often, being real about it can save you time. You just gotta learn when, where, and how to apply your realness. Nonetheless kindness always has a place in the game, even if it's just being kind to yourself. ... All you can do is try your best to be yourself and make a practice of being kind.”
― Amanda Seales, Small Doses: Potent Truths for Everyday Use

“Thanks for letting me be weird...Sorry I'm so messed up about this.'
'You don't have to be sorry; you can be weird for as long as you want...I do it all the time.'
'Yeah, but you're, like, fun-weird. I'm being...sad-weird.'
'It's not always a fun-weird world.”
― Jessica Conwell, Ghost Flower

“For a while, the rise of sociopolitical discourse both online and in physical spaces felt like slowly breaking these boundaries down one by one: we started to teach each other that everything we knew about gender, or being fat, or poor, or chronically ill, was decided by a system that had no intention of caring for us. But then the fear of being too much slowly began to reinfect all of our minds. We began to second-guess our ability to change the world, so settled with self-optimising instead.”
― Ione Gamble, Poor Little Sick Girls: A Love Letter to Unacceptable Women

“Men think that misogyny is a women's issue; women's to endure and women's to fix. White people think that racism is a pet issue for people of color; not like the pure, economic grievances of the working class. Rape is a rape victim's problem: What was she wearing? Where was she walking? Had she had sex before?”
― Lindy West, The Witches Are Coming