Quotes  
& Writing

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. - Albert Camus

Because, before self-love becomes a liberation, it is first a burden. Well, there’s the anger at who treated you poorly when you didn’t know to ask for better treatment. The anger at yourself for what you’ve allowed. There’s the grief for lost time. There’s the strangling necessity to push people, things, ideas out, out, out because there’s no room for them. There’s the loneliness and isolation that accompanies the growth of self. There’s the new boundary lines, the new range of the word no, the opening of eyes that would rather be shut, and the terrifying realization that love isn’t synonymous with joy. It’s synonymous with growth.

And growth isn’t bliss. It never was. It was a lie that said love would be white-teethed smiles on beaches.

The pinnacle of self-love is not endless ecstasy.

It is a heartbreaking process of undoing the life your unloved self built, brick by unworthy brick. -Jamie Veron

White [cis/het] men lack key information that they can only know by being on the receiving end of oppression. —Signe Swan

Art is the definition of sanity. It is the definition of self-realization. - Louise Bourgeois

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. -Alberto Giacometti 

The world is full of magic things,

patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

- William Butler Yeats

You can’t outfox your true nature. Your body will kill you as a way of tricking you into your true nature.... you might as well honor your true nature now and shove off the cultural matrix. - Martha Beck [paraphrased]

The darkness contains many truths that could bring the light to its knees - Andrea Gibson

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. -Robert Frost

“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”. -bell hooks

“Trauma recovery is coming to our senses… it is essential to tell the story via non-verbal communication.” Judith Herman