Quotes by Bloggers - Page 12

In times of division and strife, build bridges to the hearts of those clouded by anger, hurt, hatred, and ignorance, so you can help open and understand their minds and hearts, and they can understand yours.
Imania Margria
Sometimes you just have to find something to keep your body grounded, your mind flexible, and your heart open.
Imania Margria
Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury.
Fredrik Backman
Because when we give too many fucks, when we choose to give a fuck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life fucks us.
Mark Manson
It's so weird that adults in committed relationships have a problem with something so innocuous as flirting. I would never expect you to walk around with a paper bag over your head to avoid catching the eye of a stranger, nor would I discourage you making friendly conversation with whomever you might encounter during the day. And if you needed to fuck somebody else, we could talk about it. People change, our desires evolve, and it feels foolish to me to expect what you'll want two, five, or ten years from now will be exactly the same thing that fills you up today. I mean, the way I feel about fidelity has evolved over the last ten years of my life. It's a hard-and-fast rule that we don't apply to any other thing in our lives: YOU MUST LOVE THIS [SHOW/BOOK/FOOD/SHIRT] WITH UNWAVERING FERVOR FOR THE REST OF YOUR NATURAL LIFE. Could you imagine being forced to listen to your favorite record from before your music tastes were refined for the rest of your life? Right now I'm pretty sure I could listen to Midnight Snack by HOMESHAKE for the rest of my life, but me ten years ago was really into acoustic Dave Matthews, and I'm not sure how I feel about that today. And yes, I am oversimplifying it, but really, if in seven years you want to have sex with the proverbial milkman, just let me know about it beforehand so I can hide my LaCroix and half eaten wedge of port salut. ('Milkmen' always eat all the good snacks.)
Samantha Irby
In our relationship, we have very well-defined roles: I am the Vice President of Logistics; he's the CEO of Emotional Support.
Ariel Meadow Stallings
Life, weddings, relationships, road trips, gardening, making out, haircuts: few of the fun things in life always go as expected.
Ariel Meadow Stallings
He offered her power, money, status...a giant prison, all in exchange for only...her soul.
Coco J. Ginger
Share your weaknesses. Share your hard moments. Share your real side. It'll either scare away every fake person in your life or it will inspire them to finally let go of that mirage called "perfection," which will open the doors to the most important relationships you'll ever be a part of.
Dan Pearce
Education means Independence and Independence means liberty!
Lily Amis
You can't teach calculus to a chimpanzee. So just share your banana.
John Rachel
When the standard of success becomes merely acting—when any result is regarded as progress and important, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite—we propel ourselves ahead. We feel free to fail, and that failure moves us forward.
Mark Manson
In the years preceding the Civil War in America, Christian ministers wrote nearly half of all defenses of slavery.
Rachel Held Evans
Wilhelm Dilthey puts it rather starkly, "Jesus came announcing the Kingdom of God, but what appeared was the church.
Rachel Held Evans
Seems to me that for you, evangelicalism is like the boyfriend you broke up with two years ago, but whose Facebook page you still check compulsively.
Rachel Held Evans
I promise you it doesn’t matter what you believe, how strongly you live your beliefs, or how true your beliefs are. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks you are in the wrong. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks your beliefs are senseless or illogical. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks you have it all wrong. In fact, there are a lot of people in this world who do.
Dan Pearce
Nothing draws people more quickly away from religion than an open mind.
Hemant Mehta
Having a religion doesn’t make a person love or not love others. It doesn’t make a person accept or not accept others. It doesn’t make a person befriend or not befriend others.Being without a religion doesn’t make somebody do or be any of that either.No, what makes somebody love, accept, and befriend their fellow man is letting go of a need to be better than others.Nothing else.
Dan Pearce
At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?
Fredrik Backman
As a fantasist, I well understand the power of escapism, particularly as relates to romance. But when so many stories aimed at the same audience all trumpet the same message – And Lo! There shall be Two Hot Boys, one of them your Heart’s Intended, the other a vain Pretender who is also hot and with whom you shall have guilty makeouts before settling down with your One True Love – I am inclined to stop viewing the situation as benign and start wondering why, for instance, the heroines in these stories are only ever given a powerful, magical destiny of great importance to the entire world so long as fulfilling it requires male protection, guidance and companionship, and which comes to an end just as soon as they settle their inevitable differences with said swain and start kissing.I mean to invoke is something of the danger of mob rule, only applied to narrative and culture. Viz: that the comparative harmlessness of individuals does not prevent them from causing harm en masse. Take any one story with the structure mentioned above, and by itself, there’s no problem. But past a certain point, the numbers begin to tell – and that poses a tricky question. In the case of actual mobs, you’ll frequently find a ringleader, or at least a core set of agitators: belligerent louts who stir up feeling well beyond their ability to contain it. In the case of novels, however, things aren’t so clear cut. Authors tell the stories they want to tell, and even if a number of them choose to write a certain kind of narrative either in isolation or inspired by their fellows, holding any one of them accountable for the total outcome would be like trying to blame an avalanche on a single snowflake. Certainly, we may point at those with the greatest (arguable) influence or expostulate about creative domino effects, but as with the drop that breaks the levee, it is impossible to try and isolate the point at which a cluster of stories became a culture of stories – or, for that matter, to hold one particular narrative accountable for the whole.
Foz Meadows
Context is everything in both narrative and real life, and while the accusation is never that these creators deliberately set out to discriminate against gay and female characters, the unavoidable implication is that they should have known better than to add to the sum total of those stories which, en masse, do exactly that. And if the listmakers can identify the trend so thoroughly – if, despite all the individual qualifications, protests and contextualisations of the authors, these problems can still be said to exist – then the onus, however disconnected from the work of any one individual, nonetheless falls to those individuals, in their role as cultural creators, to acknowledge the problem; to do better next time; perhaps even to apologise. This last is a particular sticking point. By and large, human beings tend not to volunteer apologies for things they perceive to be the fault of other people, for the simple reason that apology connotes guilt, and how can we feel guilty – or rather, why should we – if we’re not the ones at fault? But while we might argue over who broke a vase, the vase itself is still broken, and will remain so, its shards ground into the carpet, until someone decides to clean it up.Blog Post: Love Team Freezer
Foz Meadows
How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values?The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes".And this bugs me; because if authors can stretch their imaginations far enough to envisage the presence of modern-minded men in the fake Middle Ages, then why can't they stretch them that little bit further to put in modern-minded women, or modern-minded social values? It strikes me as being extremely convenient that the one universally permitted exception to this species of "authenticity" is one that makes the male heroes look noble while still mandating that the women be downtrodden and in need of rescuing.-Comment at Staffer's Book Review 4/18/2012 to "Michael J. Sullivan on Character Agency
Foz Meadows
The surest path to success is to learn to have a healthy relationship with failure. If we aren't failing, then we aren't doing anything interesting.
Kristen Lamb
He had let me know time after time that he was a thinking man, a man of intellect and wit. Yet one unintended hungry look into my eyes and he betrayed each of his words he had carefully spoken to me. I knew it in that instant. He was a viscerally driven man. And one day, he would possess me.
Coco J. Ginger
Persistence can look a lot like stupid.
Kristen Lamb
It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.
Kristen Lamb
My lips are fierce with passion. My heart spins fiery beats. A rhythm lives within my fingers and dances in my feet.
Coco J. Ginger
It's a finger snapping kind of day.
Coco J. Ginger
He’s an indulgent sort of man……With a quick lip and a fierce tongue, the sort of tongue that draws you in with charm and words of praise, awkward silences and desperate worships.
Coco J. Ginger
You’re a mess, I confess, I despise you in the best kind of way.
Coco J. Ginger
In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there’s not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a).
John Scalzi
You don’t deserve my image in your head. You don’t deserve my memories in your chest.
Coco J. Ginger
Scripture doesn’t speak of people who found God. Scripture speaks of people who walked with God.
Rachel Held Evans
Faith is something you take a day at a time, not something you figured out at the start
Rachel Held Evans
Church isn’t about you! It’s about worshipping Jesus. Instead of being consumers, let’s go to church and ask what we can give Jesus because of all he has given us.
Rachel Held Evans
There is not a corner of this world that God has abandoned.
Rachel Held Evans
I played my role as the good Christian girl and spared everyone the drama of an argument. But that decision to remain silent split me in two. It convinced me that I could never really be myself in church. That I had to check my heart and mind at the door.
Rachel Held Evans
Turns out, I wasn't the only one struggling with doubt. I wasn't the only one questioning my church's position on homosexuality and gender roles, and a whole host of other issues. I wasn't the only one who felt lonely on Sunday mornings.
Rachel Held Evans
Ninja beats pirate. Pirate beats ghost.Ghost beats zombie. Zombie beats most.Werewolf beats vampire. Vamp beats Imp.Imp beats fiend. Fiend beats wimp.Wizard beats cyrborg. Cyborg surely beats troll.Troll beats goblin. Goblin eats a hermit’s soul.Hermit beats child. Child beats wagon.Wagon beats moon snake. Moon snake beats dragon.Dragon beats hydra. Hydra beats sailor.Sailor beats teacher. Teacher beats tailor.Tailor beats sun worm. Sun worm beats clown.Clown beats robo-squid. Robo-squid beats town.Town fights jackals. Town will win.Town fights mummies. Town won’t fight again.Zookeeper beats hell hound. Hell hound beats giant.Giant beats accountant. Accountant beats client.Client beats frog. Frog beats himself.Knight beats Big Foot. Big Foot beats elf.Elf beats pixie. Pixie beats specter.Specter beats sea hag. Sea hag beats Hector.Hector beats serpent. Serpent beats rat.Rat beats Grandma. Grandma beats cat.Lava beats demon. Demon beats warlock.Warlock beats dinosaur. Dino beats Spock.Spock beats Lando. Lando beats Qui-Gon.Qui-Gon beats Jar-Jar. Jar-Jar beats none.Rock beats scissors. Scissors beat paper.Paper beats insect. Insect beats vapor.Wood Woman beats Tree Man. Tree Man beats the dark.The dark kills spider-fish. Spider-fish beats shark.You beat me. I beat a dentist.The dentist beats the barber. The barber is menaced.These are the rules, and never forget.Now hand over your money and place your bet.
Dan Bergstein
Depression/The assassin inside me
HastyWords
We are all gardeners, planting seeds of intention and watering them with attention in every moment of every day.
Cristen Rodgers
When regret and shame fades away, beauty will be in your heart to forever stay.
Imania Margria
Writing is painting for the imagination!
Beem Weeks
A mind that searches for answers to big questions is a mind that will discover incredible things.
Beem Weeks
I ate some emotional soup in my childhood and have spent a lifetime trying to digest it.
Billy Ray Chitwood
For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.
John Scalzi
You see a person's true Colors when you are no longer beneficial to their life. But there are also the other onces who burn like candles. They burn until theny give others Light!
Lily Amis
I wish I could tell every single woman with depression or anxiety or who has gotten herself into a situation that she doesn't think she can get out of, that something life-changing could be around the corner. You just have to wait, it will come, this slump isn't forever.
Constance Hall
Sometimes it's easier to go on living, not even knowing who you are, when at least you know precisely where you are while you go on not knowing.
Fredrik Backman
We have to do it for my mum's sake. Because I'm hoping that the last sorry will be to her.
Fredrik Backman
I finished the [blog] post reflecting on the fact that, despite all the changes in my life, maybe I wasn't so different after all. If I typed it, maybe I could believe it, too.
Stephanie Nielson
Their words of encouragement were just what I needed. I was doing a great job, and I appreciated their cheers.I felt a dormlike camaraderie in the burn unit, since each of us knew the challenges we were facing like no one else could, and therefore how meaningful each triumph was.
Stephanie Nielson
We hold our dreams and ideals close to our hearts, where the promises are made to the future generations.
John Rachel
If a person who is content with his life meets someone who makes everything just a little bit more challenging, who both fits and doesn't fit into his life and his routine, to quote Guy Fieri, it is On Like Donkey Kong: swing the rope, jump the barrel, and save the princess.
Sarah Wendell
To quote French author Francois Mauriac, 'Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who your are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.
Sarah Wendell
…..she needed him to know she did not care. She was spirited, tenacious, and full of contempt for him.
Coco J. Ginger
You cannot mistake thisYou cannot reinvent this moment You cannot call this loveIt is so much more
Coco J. Ginger
Being in the habit of saying "Thank you," of making sure that people receive attention so they know you value them, of not presuming that people will always be there--this is a good habit, regardless...make sure to give virtual and actual high-fives to those who rock and rock hard.
Sarah Wendell
Real love feels less like a throbbing, pulsing animal begging for its freedom and beating against the inside of my chest and more like, 'Hey, that place you like had fish tacos today and i got you some while i was out', as it sets a bag spotted with grease on the dining room table. It's not a game you don't understand the rules of, or a test you never got the materials to study for. It never leaves you wondering who could possibly be texting at 3 am. Or what you could possibly do to make it come home and stay there. It's fucking boring, dude. I don't walk around mired in uneasiness, waiting for the other shoe to drop. No parsing through spun tales about why it took her so long to come back from the store. No checking her emails or calling her job to make sure she's actually there. No sitting in my car outside her house at dawn, to make sure she's alone when she leaves. This feels safe, and steadfast, and predictable. And secure. It's boring as shit. And it's easily the best thing I've ever felt.
Samantha Irby
Loving my son, building my son, touching my son, playing with my son, being with my son… these aren’t tasks that only super dads can perform. These are tasks that every dad should perform. Always. Without fail.
Dan Pearce