Nicole Renee > Nicole's Quotes

“In yet another commercial, Oprah somberly says, “Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be.” This is a popular notion, the idea that the fat among us are carrying a thin woman inside. Each time I see this particular commercial, I think, I ate that thin woman and she was delicious but unsatisfying. And then I think about how fucked up it is to promote this idea that our truest selves are thin women hiding in our fat bodies like imposters, usurpers, illegitimates.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“It can be easier, sometimes, to choose to love someone you know won't return your feelings. At least you know how that will end. It's easier to accept hurt and pain, sometimes, than love and acceptance. It's the real, loving relationships that can be the scariest.”
― Kacen Callender, Felix Ever After

“It's easier, sometimes, to love when you know it's a love you can't have.”
― Kacen Callender, Felix Ever After

“I’m not flaunting anything. I’m just existing. This is me. I can’t hide myself. I can’t disappear. And even if I could, I don’t fucking want to. I have the same right to be here. I have the same right to exist.”
― Kacen Callender, Felix Ever After

“That room has been static for me so long:
an emptiness. a void. a silence
containing an unheard story
ready for me to unlock.

Let there be plot.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“If you were a song
What song would you be?

Would you be the voice that sings,
Would you be the music?

When I am singing this song for you
You are not empty air

You are here,
One breath and then another:

You are here with me...”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“The hands reaching in
among the leaves and spines
were once my mother's.
I've passed them on.
Decades ahead, you'll study your own
temporary hands, and you'll remember.
Don't cry, this is what happens.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Me, it’s the heart:
that’s the part lacking.
I used to want one:
a dainty cushion of red silk
dangling from a blood ribbon,
fit for sticking pins in.
But I’ve changed my mind.
Hearts hurt.

— Margaret Atwood, from “The Tin Woodwoman Gets a Massage ,” Dearly: New Poems (Ecco, 2020)”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Dearly beloved, gathered here together in this closed drawer, fading now, I miss you. I miss the missing, those who left earlier. I miss even those who are still here. I miss you all dearly. Dearly do I sorrow for you.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Poetry deals with the core of human existence: life, death, renewal, change; as well as fairness and unfairness, injustice and sometimes justice. The world in all its variety.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: Poems

“That's who is waiting for me:
an invisible man
defined by a dotted line:

the shape of an absence
in your place at the table,
sitting across from me,
eating toast and eggs as usual
or walking ahead up the drive,
a rustling of the fallen leaves,
a slight thickening of the air.

It's you in the future,
we both know that.
You'll be here but not here,
a muscle memory, like hanging a hat
on a hook that's not there any longer.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Oh yes, In Love,
that demented rose-red circus tent
whose half-light forgives all visuals,
fig-leaves our lovers,
and softens our own brains
and the pain of our sawdust pratfalls.
 
So tempting, that midway faux-marble arch,
both funfair and classical—
so Greek, so Barnum,
such a beacon,
with a sign in gas-blue neon:
 
Love! This way!
In!”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“You didn't need it anyway,
it attracted too much attention.
Better with only a shadow.

Someone wants your shadow.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Beads can be used for counting. As in rosaries. But I don’t like stones around my neck.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: New Poems

“The aliens arrive. We like the part where we get saved. We like the part where we get destroyed. Why do those feel so similar? Either way, it's an end.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“And when I go that way, grow fur, start howling, scratch at your airwaves: no matter who I claim I am or how I love you, turn the key. Bar the window.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Many things that are not what you want
arrive in the disguise of flowers.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“I am offering the only thing I have. I am holding out my hand, feeding myself to the hungry future.”
― Maggie Smith, Goldenrod: Poems

“The body remains a house unaware of its rooms.”
― Maggie Smith, Goldenrod: Poems

“That bit of blue doesn't belong to them, and they don't belong to the sky, or to the earth, or to us. Isn't that what you've been taught — nothing is ours? Haven't you learned to keep the loosest possible hold?”
― Maggie Smith, Goldenrod: Poems

“This unintended consequence of performing unity exemplifies the ways in which people can mean well and still do absolutely wrong. Best-case scenario, the black square shows your network that you at least care about black people enough to post a photo, which I should note is free and easy. Unfortunately, worst-case scenario, this insignificant action can set forth a tidal wave of trouble for the grassroots activists on the ground doing the work. Performing solidarity is inherently selfish. Its very point is to virtue-signal that you are a good person, because it matters to you that people know you are a good person.”
― Ziwe,, Black Friend: Essays

“But intention is not an excuse for impact.”
― Ziwe,, Black Friend: Essays

“If my career is a living testament of anything, let it be that one opportunity is not enough. It is a series of cracked-open windows and doors that have gotten me into a position of what I would describe as fleeting power. We need as many opportunities as possible. To fail, to be bad, and then to eventually succeed.”
― Ziwe Fumudoh, Black Friend: Essays

“The last time I visited LA, I was at a cool Hollywood party where suddenly the host directed guests to look outside. Why? Because it was raining ash and if you tilted your head and hated Greta Thunberg, it looked like snow.”
― Ziwe, Black Friend: Essays

“If you are wondering what gives me the unique qualifications to write about the complex subject of race in America, the answer is: vibes.”
― Ziwe,, Black Friend: Essays

“Logic serves that if I never age, I can't be thrown away.”
― Ziwe, Black Friend: Essays

“All of this resulted in my classmates laughing at me, which, thanks to what my therapist describes as habitual disassociation, I did not process in real time.”
― Ziwe Fumudoh, Black Friend: Essays

“Personally, I long to be a canceled rich man because that is just a vacation.”
― Ziwe,, Black Friend: Essays

“Listening to the voice of a woman who seemed to belong to everyone but herself reminded me of her strength, because even as Britney suffered in isolation, her words moved millions—excuse me, billions—to dance. She reminds me that there are some souls that you cannot keep down. Some people are destined to be great.”
― Ziwe,, Black Friend: Essays

“We are wiser to the fact that having a black friend is not a defense against accusations of racism, just like having a black child does not absolve Thomas Jefferson from being a fugly hater.”
― Ziwe Fumudoh, Black Friend: Essays