Elysia > Elysia's Quotes

“When we use problem-solving in place of punishment, we are truly modeling the attitude we want our kids to take toward conflict in their lives. Not “I’m a bad kid who doesn’t deserve a bedtime story.” Not “I’m a failure as a mom because I screamed at my kid,” but rather, “How can I fix my mistake?” “How can I make things work better?” “What should I try next time?” The larger message is: When there is conflict between us, we don’t need to put our energy into fighting each other. We can combine forces to search for a solution that respects the needs of all parties. The child is an active participant in solving his problems. This will stand him in good stead in the years to come.”
― Joanna Faber, How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2-7

“Unplug from the humble needs of the body and a person becomes no more than a ghost.”
― Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

“The world is cruel enough as it is. Everything that is not love is cowardice.”
― Flea, Acid for the Children: A Memoir

“The truth is we don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t even know the questions we need to ask in order to find out, but when we learn one tiny little thing, a dim light comes on in a dark hallway, and suddenly a new question appears. We spend decades, centuries, millennia, trying to answer that one question so that another dim light will come on. That’s science, but that’s also everything else, isn’t it? Try. Experiment. Ask a ton of questions.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“I suspect that this is why I excelled at math and science, where the rules are laid out step by step, where if you did something exactly the way it was supposed to be done, the result would be exactly as it was expected to be.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“the more I do this work the more I believe in a kind of holiness in our connection to everything on Earth. Holy is the mouse. Holy is the grain the mouse eats. Holy is the seed. Holy are we.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“I grew up around people who were distrustful of science, who thought of it as a cunning trick to rob them of their faith, and I have been educated around scientists and laypeople alike who talk about religion as though it were a comfort blanket for the dumb and the weak, a way to extol the virtues of a God more improbable than our own human existence. But this tension, this idea that one must necessarily choose between science and religion, is false. I used to see the world through a God lens, and when that lens clouded, I turned to science. Both became, for me, valuable ways of seeing, but ultimately both have failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“Whether you want to build a mansion to live in, a row of stores to make customers happy, a game that visitors have to learn to beat, your own mystery island or more; you can create just about anything when you”
― Triumph Books, Master Builder Roblox: The Essential Guide

“Why did human beings need love from where they wanted it rather than from where they were getting it?”
― Sonali Dev, The Vibrant Years

“I have traveled widely enough that I take everything written about “foreigners” with doubt and know better than to judge a community by their worst individuals.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“Is there any stare like that belonging to your children, the kind that fills you with love and responsibility at once?”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“To mourn a budding physician was a terrible task, but it was a thing you could do. To mourn a girl with infinite futures was to mourn infinitely.”
― Alexis Schaitkin, Saint X

“We see so little of people. We forget how much submerged darkness there is around us at every moment. We forget until we are forced to remember.”
― Alexis Schaitkin, Saint X

“Point blank, if we could simply control whom, when, why and how we were in love with or attracted to anyone, the world would be much simpler. There are obviously things we can change, such as going out more to meet people or working on being more communicative, that can make us better partners overall. We can challenge our assumptions in a lot of ways and work on ourselves. But through your actions you can only control who you become, not whether or not someone appreciates or loves who you are.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“If you could prevent bad stuff from happening to you then you could have prevented what has already happened to you. Because so much is out of your control, putting all the responsibility to prevent something from happening to you completely on your shoulders is unrealistic”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“Once you stop blaming yourself for everything that has happened to you, you can actually shift too far into the opposite end of that – which is continuously blaming other people or other circumstances for things you have the power to change.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“Forgiving myself and having compassion for myself for making the mistakes that I did led me to a place where I had a lot more compassion and forgiveness for others.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“the biggest breakthrough was realizing that for some people a ‘calm’ nervous system is unnatural to them and they might seek out or attempt to do things that cause nervous system reactions because they feel so uncomfortable in the ‘calm’.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“When you understand that you can experience strong emotions without having a dysregulated nervous system, it changes your relationship to big emotions and makes them far less terrifying to face.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“Remember that you are more powerful than you give yourself credit for.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“But you have the capacity to define what fulfilment means to you and you alone and there’s no time like the present to decide.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“One of the most common things that people who abuse or hurt others have – whether their behaviour stems from past trauma, brain structure, inadequate socialization or anything else – is the assumption of entitlement.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“While I do think it’s important to recognize that blaming other people for causing your emotions is reductive, disempowering and, at worst, manipulative, the idea that a person has no responsibility for the emotional pain they cause can be used just as harmfully.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“Whether you’re monogamous or polyamorous, you still have to cultivate a relationship with yourself and prioritize your own needs so that you can actually show up fully for other people.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“Another thing that Bancroft’s book highlighted to me was that abusive relationships are rarely all bad and that people who abuse can often be great people when they aren’t abusing their partners. It’s not as simple as finding a complete monster among angels.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“you’re also going to be coming to grips with what anyone who tries to talk about abuse goes through: the more popular someone is or the more social capital they have, the more likely it is that the people around them will not want to hear anything negative about them.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go