Christy Agrawal > Christy's Quotes

“Nobody tells you how claustrophobic it is to fall in love at first sight.”
― Kate Collins, A Good House for Children

“If I do nothing else with this life, carrying my mother’s blood is enough.”
― K-Ming Chang, Organ Meats

“Her laughter is a season you want to stand in forever, golden leaves relinking with the trees, springtime fizzing out of a bottle.”
― K-Ming Chang, Organ Meats

“The direction of all life is toward loss.”
― K-Ming Chang, Organ Meats

“I think I'll decompose in my own order, an order I'll decide. It will be my bones and teeth first, all my hardest parts, and then my organs, largest to smallest, and then my tongue and hair and eyeballs, and then my skin. I'm going to rot from the inside out. Not the outside in. When they dig me up, all that will be left is what I think, what I dream.”
― K-Ming Chang, Organ Meats

“You can’t trust the outside of anything”
― K-Ming Chang, Organ Meats

“Systems do not maintain themselves; even our lack of intervention is an act of maintenance. Every structure in every society is upheld by the active and passive assistance of other human beings.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Equally damaging is our insistence that all bodies should be healthy. Health is not a state we owe the world. We are not less valuable, worthy, or lovable because we are not healthy. Lastly, there is no standard of health that is achievable for all bodies.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“When we say we don’t see color, what we are truly saying is, “I don’t want to see the things about you that are different because society has told me they are dangerous or undesirable.” Ignoring difference does not change society; nor does it change the experiences non-normative bodies must navigate to survive. Rendering difference invisible validates the notion that there are parts of us that should be ignored, hidden, or minimized, leaving in place the unspoken idea that difference is the problem and not our approach to dealing with difference.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Saying I’m fat is (and should be) the same as saying my shoes are black, the clouds are fluffy, and Bob Saget is tall. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. The only negativity that this word carries is that which has been socially constructed around it.… We don’t need to stop using the word fat, we need to stop the hatred that our world connects with the word fat.2”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“there is no standard of health that is achievable for all bodies. Our belief that there should be anchors the systemic oppression of ableism and reinforces the notion that people with illnesses and disabilities have defective bodies rather than different bodies.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Too often, self-acceptance is used as a synonym for acquiescence. We accept the things we cannot change.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Making peace with your body is your mighty act of revolution. It is your contribution to a changed planet where we might all live unapologetically in the bodies we have.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Radical Reflection Say it again, for the folks in the bleachers: You are not your thoughts! That said, avoiding your thoughts will not help you train your brain to think new ones. You must look at them with gentle kindness and say, “Thank you for sharing.“ And with love, release them.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Natural intelligence intends that every living thing become the highest form of itself and designs us accordingly.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Consider this hypothesis: when we don’t see ourselves reflected in the world around us, we make judgments about that absence. Invisibility is a statement.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Perhaps you never have time when you are alone? You only acquire it by watching it go by in others".”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering? That is another question that will remain unanswered: I feel as though I am made of nothing else.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Inevitably, with memory comes pain.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Talking is existing.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“in the face of horror, ancient rituals regained their meaning”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“I wondered what would make me stop, whether it would be hunger, sleep or boredom – in other words, what prompts decisions when you are utterly alone.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“I felt a surge of grief, I, who had never known men, as I stood in front of this man who had wanted to overcome fear and despair to enter eternity upright and furious.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“I cannot mourn for what I have not known.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“this slow dissipation, the gradual abandonment of all expectations, a defeat that had killed everything without a battle.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“The reader and I thus mingled will constitute something living, that will not be me, because I will be dead, and will not be that person as they were before reading, because my story, added to their mind, will then become part of their thinking.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men