Jess > Jess's Quotes

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You are in my blood. I can't help it. We can't be anywhere except together.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Weetzie Bat

“Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”
― Margaret Atwood, Der blinde Mörder

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood

“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
― Irina Dunn

“There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“A good story is a good story no matter who wrote it.”
― Anne McCaffrey

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”
― Brigham Young

“I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It’ll settle you.'
'I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“I understand I have no place here. I understand I am lost in the god's eye. I understand I must find my purpose or I will go mad in this green, godless place.”
― Karen Miller

“In this office we do not have problems. We have interesting developments. We have challenges. If we absolute must we may, on occasion, have a slight difficulty. But under no circumstances whatsoever do we have problems.”
― Karen Miller, The Innocent Mage

“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

“A 1967 New York Times editorial declared Milwaukee “America’s most segregated city.” A supermajority in both houses had helped President Johnson pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but legislators backed by real estate lobbies refused to get behind his open housing law, which would have criminalized housing discrimination. It took Martin Luther King Jr. being murdered on a Memphis balcony, and the riots that ensued, for Congress to include a real open housing measure later that year in the 1968 Civil Rights Act, commonly called the Fair Housing Act.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks.

The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don't want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“It wasn't just Adnan being indicted at this grand jury proceeding, it wasn't just him being prosecuted. His faith, his ethnicity, his community--they were all on trial.”
― Rabia Chaudry, Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial