Jenn > Jenn's Quotes

“Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. ... What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“We all search for our meaning, and if we do not find meaning in who we are or what we do, we often search outside ourselves for someone to tell us both, sometimes to the detriment of ourselves and the larger society...”
― Jim Ford, The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality

“My question is, how and why would a being who has no soul, and no conscience, and no ability to judge between morality and immorality, suddenly become capable of perceiving it [Spike's attempted rap of Buffy] as a "wrong" which needs to be "righted"?”
― Jim Ford, The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality

“He [Spike] has already demonstrated a capacity to love, already demonstrated a capacity to be selfless, and, possibly most importantly, has demonstrated that he has a conscience.”
― Jim Ford, The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality

“Redemption becomes possible when we strive to find selflessness, conscience, and a capacity to love within ourselves where before there was none.”
― Jim Ford, The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality

“Another dream. Another long-distance call on my phantom party line. No wonder i had steadfastly refused to have dreams for most of my life. So stupid; such pointless, obvious symbols. Totally uncontrollable anxiety soup, hateful, blatant nonsense.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“Another beautiful Miami day. Mutilated corpses with a chance of afternoon showers. I got dressed and went to work.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“And here I always thought morality was useless”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“It was always hard work to push through a crowed of reporters with the scent of blood in their nostrils. You might not think so, since on camera they appear to be brain-damaged wimps with severe eating disorders. But put them at a police barricade and a miraculous thing happens...The strength comes from some mysterious place-and somehow, when there is gore on the ground, these anorexic creatures can push their way through anything. Without mussing their hair, too.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“I rose to my knees, mouth dry and heart pounding, and paused to finger a rip in my beautiful Dacron bowling shirt. I pushed my fingertip through the hole and wiggled it at myself. Hello, Dexter, where are you going? Hello, Mr. Finger. I don't know, but I'm almost there. I hear my friends calling.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“My favorite random email I got was from some guy who wrote: "Mr. Max, with the hope of a six year old on the night before Christmas asking about Santa, I ask the same question: Do you really exist?”
― Tucker Max, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

“Two girls called me closed minded. I tell them that they are so open-minded their brains leaked out.”
― Tucker Max

“Ladies, let me give you some advice. You can throw all your stupid fucking chick-lit, self-help, why-doesn't-he-love-me books out, because this is all you need to know: Men will treat you the way you let them. There is no such thing as "deserving" respect; you get what you demand from people.. if you demand respect, he will either respect you or he won't associate with you. It really is that simple.”
― Tucker Max, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

“Girl3 "You don't have to be a jerk"
SlingBlade "Quite the contrary, my sloppy penile scholar.Order me another drink and be quick about it.”
― Tucker Max, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

“The show tries to offer its young female characters postfeminist identities that break down gender boundaries and hybridize gendered characteristics to produce new versions of power and heroism...being a woman involves work, work of constant self-(re)construction. Buffy's female characters are represented as always working in this way, whether to come to terms with power, or to maintain a "successful "good-girl" identity...”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“Good partners offer the "reward" of romance, but these girls cannot have power and a successful relationship, partly because of the demands of serial narrative, but partly because they seek agency in their romance relationships”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“I suggest that across the seasons of Buffy there has been an increasing exaggeration of bad girls...In some ways, instead of challenging these stereotypes of bad girls, the show has emphasized them. This matches the development of the show's good girls.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“That both Riley and Warren are attracted to independent young women is an interesting contradiction that serves to valorize the agency of the "girls" and to underline the static macho masculinity of those guys- they cannot or will not change, therefore they cannot keep the girl.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“...the new man cannot exist without the old monster masculinity. All the new men are aware of how masculinity is constructed and therefore how they differ from its traditional form...new men do not have to "lack" the attributes of real men, and therefore make them more appealing to viewers, but it also closes down some of their potential for a revisioning of masculinity.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“...the character's failure to move with the times leads to death, suggesting the anachronistic nature of this [hyper/stereotypical] type of masculinity.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“The display of Angel's body and the sexual reaction it provokes lead to the revelation of his vampire nature: as he kisses Buffy, he shows his vamp face (a displaced manifestation of male desire?). The tension inherent in this display of the masculine body is that it actually has the effect of feminizing the character by positioning the male as sexual object to be looked at.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“...his [Angel's] body is displayed semi-naked at least as often in scenes of woundign or torture as in "bedroom" scenes (season 2 scenes with Drusilla conflate the two throuhg S/M)..."Angel spends a ludicrous amount of time in chains, shirtless.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“Thus angel embodies neatly the idea that "the muscular body functions as a powerful symbol of desire and lack." Angel is manly but not a man, and his display of masculinity points to the ambivalences that surround gender.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“Spike is sensitive not only in that he is easily hurt but also in the "feminine" way of being attuned to situations, relationships, and underlying emotions, as his frequently perceptive comments demonstrate. this ability to articulate his emotions also explains why his character fits so well into "Buffy", a show that consistently values this trait...”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“Throughout the relationship Spike has ignored Buffy's denials, even though it was fairly clean that Buffy's "no" didn't mean no and ambivalent scenes such as this paved the way for the "real" violence of the attempted rape...there are strong links between love, sex, and violence, and Spike uses romantic heterosexual love as a "defense" of sexualized violence.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“The beatings are further proof that Spike's "humiliation," the level to which he has sunk, and a physical sign of vulnerability. But they are also "sexy wounds" (as Buffy playing Robot-Buffy says in "Intervention"), since Spike's body is displayed to be looked at. Further, as with Angel and Dru, Spike and Buffy's relationship uses pain/violence as eroticism (when Spike tells Buddy "I love you," she responds "You're in love with pain" ["Smashed"]). Mulvey's association of voyeurism, sadism, and narrative is useful here.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“...Spike may be the most "hybridized" character in terms of gender, within the show he is presented until the last moment as a failure.”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“Transgressions is the attraction of any dead boy, but as with openness of other more minor characters, this functions both to enlarge and restrict their potential as alternative gender representations. Dead boys exist through binary opposition; they are always already Other”
― Lorna Jowett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan

“Entertaining for a moment that it is purepsychology, the that "soul" is a concept in the imagination and nothing more, what can we determine? Also, for a moment, completely rejecting the treatment and use of the soul concept in the Buffy series because of its contradictory presentation and because of its negative potential, the question then becomes, if there is no such thing as a soul, then what about redemption? Is it possible in the Buffy worldview...for any being to be redeemed without a soul?”
― Jim Ford, The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality

“The Wizard, being a wise man, knows there is no such thing as a "heart," a "brain," or "courage" that could be bestowed and have an impact on the receiver. These are concept only- not tangible things.”
― Jim Ford, The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality