Kat > Kat's Quotes

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“We've read Jane Eyre too, you cunt, and we've read The Waves, and when we read it, you know, we wept for minutes.
Then he stars weeping.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn't like it, but it made it easier to go on.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“They’re on a pedestal from the second they’re born, only they don’t realize it. Whenever they need something, their moms come running. They’re taught to believe that their penises make them superior, and that women are just there for them to use as they see fit. Then they go out into the world, where everything centers around them and their dicks. And it’s women who have to make it work. At the end of the day, where is this pain that men feel coming from? In their opinion: us. It’s all our fault—whether they’re unpopular, broke, jobless. Whatever it is, they blame women for all of their failures, all their problems. Now think about women. No matter how you see it, who’s actually responsible for the majority of the pain women feel? If you think about it that way, how could a man and a woman ever see eye to eye? It’s structurally impossible.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs

“My monolithic expectation of what a woman’s body was supposed to look like had no bearing on what actually happened to my body. The two things were wholly unrelated. I never became the woman I imagined. And what was I expecting?”
― Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs

“People are only what they think of themselves.”
― Ai Yazawa, Nana, Vol. 1

“The dreams we are chasing and the reality that is chasing us are always parallel; they never meet.”
― Ai Yazawa

“I have a message for my fans. Whatever you want to do in this world, it is achievable. The most important thing that I've found, that perhaps you could use, is be passionate and enthusiastic in the direction that you choose in life, and you'll be a winner.”
― Steve Irwin

“If we can teach people about wildlife, they will be touched. Share my wildlife with me. Because humans want to save things that they love.”
― Steve Irwin

“Only in America can you be pro-death penalty, pro-war, pro-unmanned drone bombs, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-guns, pro-torture, pro-land mines, and still call yourself 'pro-life.”
― John Fugelsang

“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn't know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can't always take the analytical position.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“There’s always been something inside her that men have wanted to dominate, and their desire for domination can look so much like attraction, even love.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Was I kind to others? It was hard to nail down an answer. I worried that if I did turn out to have a personality, it would be one of the unkind ones. Did I only worry about this question because as a woman I felt required to put the needs of others before my own? Was “kindness” just another term for submission in the face of conflict? These were the kind of things I wrote about in my diary as a teenager: as a feminist I have the right not to love anyone.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I'm left with that funny feeling that happens when you spend a supposedly intimate occasion with people you don't feel any genuine intimacy with. That strange, gnawing feeling, equal parts hollow and lonely and wistful, with a tinge of irritability underneath. Craving something more. But accepting that this is it.”
― Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age

“I’m used to the person I’m dating, or sleeping with, or whatever it is, telling me all the things I ought to know instead of getting to know me. It’s how men, or boys, or both, communicate. They quote and they riff and they rant and they explain and they explain and they explain.”
― Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age

“Men carve meaning into women’s faces; messages addressed to other men.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

“Reward: I SAID THE GHOST OF STEVE IRWIN SMILES DOWN UPON YOU.”
― Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

“Mana Toast. This is toast. It refills your mana. That’s it. Nothing more. Fuck you.”
― Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

“Kids aren’t always a product of their parents. But sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes parents can cast a shadow so thick, you can drown in it.”
― Matt Dinniman, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

“Capital punishment means those without the capital get the punishment. ​- ​Executed Prisoner, John A. Spenkelink”
― Matt Dinniman, The Gate of the Feral Gods

“Story time. In September of 1869, there was a terrible fire at the Avondale coal mine near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. Over 100 coal miners lost their lives. Horrific conditions and safety standards were blamed for the disaster. It wasn’t the first accident. Hundreds of miners died in these mines every year. And those that didn’t, lived in squalor. Children as young as eight worked day in and out. They broke their bodies and gave their lives for nothing but scraps. That day of the fire, as thousands of workers and family members gathered outside the mine to watch the bodies of their friends and loved ones brought to the surface, a man named John Siney stood atop one of the carts and shouted to the crowd: Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families, your homes, your country, but do not longer consent to die, like rats in a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than in the pick you dig with. That day, thousands of coal miners came together to unionize. That organization, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, managed to fight, for a few years at least, to raise safety standards for the mines by calling strikes and attempting to force safety legislation. ... Until 1875, when the union was obliterated by the mine owners. Why was the union broken so easily? Because they were out in the open. They were playing by the rules. How can you win a deliberately unfair game when the rules are written by your opponent? The answer is you can’t. You will never win. Not as long as you follow their arbitrary guidelines. This is a new lesson to me. She’s been teaching me so many things, about who I am. About what I am. What I really am. About what must be done. Anyway, during this same time, it is alleged a separate, more militant group of individuals had formed in secret. The Molly Maguires. Named after a widow in Ireland who fought against predatory landlords, the coal workers of Pennsylvania became something a little more proactive, supposedly assassinating over two dozen coal mine supervisors and managers. ... Until Pinkerton agents, hired by the same mine owners, infiltrated the group and discovered their identities. Several of the alleged Mollies ended up publicly hanged. Others disappeared. You get the picture. So, that’s another type of secret society. The yeah-we’re-terrorists-but-we-strongly-feel-we’re-justified-and-fuck-you-if-you-don’t-agree society. So, what’s the moral of this little history lesson? This sort of thing happens all day, every day across the universe. It happens in Big Ways, and it happens in little ways, too. The strong stomp on the weak. The weak fight back, usually within the boundaries of the rat trap they find themselves confined. They almost always remain firmly stomped. But sometimes, the weak gather in secret. They make plans. They work outside the system to effect change. Like the Mollies, they usually end up just as stomped as everyone else. But that’s just life. At least they fucking tried. They died with their boots on, as much as I hate that expression. They died with their boots on for their people, their family, not for some rich, nameless organization that gives no shits whether they live or die. Or go extinct. Or are trapped for a millennia after they’re done being used. In my opinion, that’s the only type of society that’s worth joining, worth fighting for. Sure, you’re probably gonna die. But if you find yourself in such a position where such an organization is necessary, what do you have to lose? How can you look at yourself if you don’t do everything you can? And that brings us to the door you’re standing in front of right now. What does all this have to do with what you’re going to find on the other side? Nothing!”
― Matt Dinniman, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride