Ashleigh

“I think it's helpful to know how sunsets work. I don't buy the romantic notion that scientific understanding somehow robs the universe of its beauty, but I still can't find language to describe how breathtakingly beautiful sunsets are--not breathtakingly, actually, but breath-givingly beautiful. All I can say is that sometimes when the world is between day and night, I'm stopped cold by its splendor, and I feel my absurd smallness. You'd think that would be sad, but it isn't. It only makes me grateful.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“Then, and now, one of the most effective ways to stop cultural change is to create a moral panic around it. Moral panics have been around since this country’s inception, with the Salem witch trials being among the first widely publicized (and deadly) panics. Since then, moral panics have been used as a tool to subvert and dismantle movements that the dominant caste views as a threat. And this included civil rights.”
― Sharon McMahon, The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History

“But the person who is willing to reconsider their assumptions? The hero who can sit down and reevaluate their life? Well, now that is a gemstone that truly glitters, friend.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“We want to imagine that people are consistent, steady, stable. We define who they are, create descriptions to lock them on a page, divide them up by their likes, talents, beliefs. Then we pretend some—perhaps most—are better than we are, because they stick to their definitions, while we never quite fit ours. Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don’t recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we’ve been told to inhabit. We can keep going that way for a while. We can pretend we fit that jug, awkward nooks and all. But the longer we do, the worse it gets. The more it wears on us. The more exhausted we become. Even if we’re doing nothing at all, because simply holding the shape can take all the effort in the world. More, if we want to make it look natural.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea