Melanie

“The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures."

"That's an oversimplification of the issue."

"The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world don't you? I'm terrified of that world and I don't want to live in a that world, and as a mixed race person, I literally don't exist in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Korea Town Los Angeles and as any mixed race person will tell you-- to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“After the death of the poet Jane Kenyon, her husband Donald Hall wrote, “We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“I'm afraid I've done nothing at all to advance the plot."
"You chose to come away with me," Ned reminded her.
"So this is merely romance," she frowned disapprovingly. "I was hoping for an epic adventure, or a gothic mystery at the very least."
Ned laughed. "Darling, don't worry, the story has just begun.”
― India Holton, The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels

“Despair isn't very productive. That's the problem with it. Like a replicating virus, all despair can make is more of itself.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet