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She’s all the reminder I need that the only person who can give you permission to live life and to live it big is yourself.
“I tell you,” she says, “love comes and goes, but lipstick is forever.”
But something in me has always felt like the more people you share your hopes with, the flimsier they become. Suddenly everyone else is poking holes in your future until there’s not much left to hope for at all.
does. Sometimes being fat and finding clothing is like trying to ice-skate in the desert.
“Find the things you love and do them every day, even if it means failing. That’s all there is to it.”
“If you only love what comes easy for you, you’ll find you don’t have much to love. Work for it, girl.”
“You will. One day you’ll wake up and find that there’s a woman, or maybe a few, who have outlasted every changing season in your life.”
I wish to feel like this all the time. That I’ve found my place, and that my place isn’t just a geographical coordinate, but a living, breathing thing that I carry inside of me. That is my 0.10 percent wish.
“Well,” she says. “I don’t know that I’m all that great, but I want to be better, which is why I need to get into this journalism camp. Because I want to be unstoppable. I want there to be no reason for people to say no to me. I want to be so perfect that if they’re going to say no to me because of this”—she motions down to her body—“then they’ll have to say so out loud to my face.”
“Sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. If I want to call the shots, I have to start acting like it. And when that camera turns on, it’s like someone flips a switch inside me and gives me permission to be the version of myself I only dream of.”
I want to help change the rules, you know? To help make everything more fair. But no one cares about evening the playing field or changing the rules unless they have some kind of connection. I guess . . . well, that’s what stories do. They connect people. Stories change hearts and then hearts change the world.”
A soft smile plays at Malik’s lips. “You think you know a place,” he says. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, but it’s like with camerawork. You just adjust your position, even slightly, and suddenly you’re telling a different story. Seeing a new world.”
But I kind of wonder what it feels like to love something so much that you’re even happy to fail at it.”
Boys are straight-up sorcery.
Mama says Austin was made to be a tiny-big city, but now it’s trying to be a big-big city in tiny-big-city pants, which actually makes some weird kind of sense.
“Don’t get me wrong, though. Fat girl pride. Riots not diets and all that.” “Riots not diets? I like that.” Note to self: add to my to-stitch list.
For the longest time, I thought the power of positive thinking would get me by. And it helps, that’s for dang sure. But it takes more than thinking and hoping and wishing and praying. You need a whole lot of doing.
And why is everyone always trying to take money away from libraries? Aren’t books sort of the reason we’re even in school at all?
If Dumplin’ was about coming to terms with your own body, Puddin’ is about demanding that the world do the same. I wrote this book for all the fat kids who have waited too damn long for the world to accept them. Stop waiting. The revolution starts with and belongs to you.
