Christine > Christine's Quotes

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
― thomas paine, Rights of Man

“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.

Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.”
― Louise Bourgeois

“The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.”
― Louise Bourgeois

“Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner's love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant.”
― bell hooks

“Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.”
― bell hooks

“the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.”
― bell hooks

“The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.”
― bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

“A mother" "& child" "were both on fire, continuously"
"The fire" "was contained in them" "sealed them off
from others" "But you could see the flame" "halo
of short flame all about the" "conjoined bodies, who
sat" "they sat apart" "on a seat for two" "at end of car" "The ghost" "of the father" "sat in flames" "beside them" "paler flames" "sat straight ahead" "looking straight ahead, not" "moving." "A woman"
"another woman" "in a uniform" "from above the ground" "entered" "the train" "She was fireproof" "She was gloves, & she" "took" "the baby" "took the baby" "away from the"" "mother" "Extracted" "the burning baby" "from the fire" "they made together" "But the baby" "still burned" ("But not yours" "It didn't happen" "to you")
"'We don't know yet" "if it will" "stop burning,'" "said the uniformed" "woman" "The burning woman" "was crying" "she made a form" "in her mind" "an imaginary" "form" "to settle" "in her arms where" "the baby" "had been" "We saw her fiery arms" "cradle air" "She cradled air" ("They take your
children" "away" "if you're on fire")
"In the air that" "she cradled" "it seemed to us there" "floated" "a flower-like" "a red flower" "its petals" "curling flames"
"She cradled" "seemed to cradle" "the burning flower of" "herself gone" "her life" ("She saw" "whatever she saw, but what we saw" "was that flower")”
― Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette