Terri

“When a ruler gives up on empathy and sentiment, it is a sign of desperation. It means they’re paring away emotion in favor of efficiency and numbers and a twisted fantasy of a better life without the joys and burdens of caring about something outside of themselves. Contempt for kindness and generosity is the surest sign there is that someone has nothing else left to them but a horrible emptiness much worse than weakness. It’s an—anti-strength. And the dying monster plods along, unaware it’s rotting.” Kordas”
― Mercedes Lackey, Beyond

“Almost every system we exist in is cruel, and it is our job to hold ourselves accountable to a moral center separate from the arbitrary ganglion of laws that, so often, get things wrong. This is the work we inherit as creatures with a complex brain, which comes with inexplicable joys, like love and sex and making out in cars, but also the duty of empathy, of understanding what it means when someone is stumbling.”
― Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

“In that sense, there’s freedom in being “average” looking—I never had any illusions that I would need to rely on my looks for anything. But we’re all just at the mercy of the patriarchy, right? When I say that I’m completely average looking, by what metric am I even judging that? A metric that, for millennia, has been determined by men, internalized by women, and spat back out in the form of color-blocked leggings and matching sports bras.”
― Doree Shafrir, Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer

“A certain kind of exhaustion sets in from having to constantly explain and justify one’s existence or participation in an artistic or creative realm. What a privilege it must be to never have to answer the question "How does it feel to be a woman playing music?" or "Why did you choose to be in an all-female band?" The people who get there early have to work the hardest.”
― Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl