Olivia > Olivia's Quotes

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Voting isn't the most we can do, but the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Success often lies not in what happens but in what you prevent from happening”
― Ron Stallworth, Black Klansman: A Memoir

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“The nation as it is currently constituted has never dealt with a yesterday or tomorrow where we were radically honest, generous, and tender with each other.”
― Kiese Laymon, Heavy

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)”
― Cornel West, Race Matters

“Finally, I've come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It's a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant. We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Sometimes she craved a little danger. And that was why she had book club.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

“You’d rather get stabbed forty-one times than ruin the curb appeal of your home?” Maryellen asked.
“Yes,” Grace said.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

“What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others? And is it sane or insane to believe, as so many around us apparently do, in nothing? We can only answer these questions for ourselves. Our life and our death have taught us always to sympathize with the undesirables among the undesirables. Thus magnetized by experience, our compass continually points toward those who suffer.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer