AChui > AChui's Quotes

“You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

“I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“It’s hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you’re going to float the fuck away.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“I've had enough of men hurting me because they were upset.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Kingdom of Copper

“Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.”
― Isabel Allende

“I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tribe Of Mentors: Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” –Anaïs Nin”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tribe Of Mentors: Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges

“It's a sighted, hearing classroom, in a sighted, hearing school, in a sighted, hearing society. They designed this environment for people who can see and hear. In this environment, I'm disabled. They place the burden on me to step out of my world and reach into theirs”
― Haben Girma, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law

“Disability is not something an individual overcomes. I'm still disabled. I'm still Deafblind. People with disabilities are successful when we develop alternative techniques and our communities choose inclusion.”
― Haben Girma, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law

“Benjamin Franklin said it best: “Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”
― Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well

“Hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience, rather than about things. It is about being with the people we love. A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe, that we are shielded from the world and allow ourselves to let our guard down.”
― Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

“The pressure to be “good” is not exclusive to one gender, nor is it applied equally to all genders. To be clear, the stress on girls to be “good” far surpasses any stress men might feel to be “good.” This disparity is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that when a girl does something “wrong,” few mourn her goodness. We rarely hear, “I thought she was one of the good girls.” Women who behave “badly” are ultimately not given the same benefit of the doubt as men and are immediately cast off as bitches or sluts. Men might be written off as “dogs,” but their reckless behaviour is more often unnoticed, forgiven, or even celebrated—hence our cultural fixation with bad boys.”
― Vivek Shraya , I'm Afraid of Men.

“This praise highlights another problem with the idea of the "good man"—the bar is ultimately a low one, and men are heralded every day for engaging in basic acts of domestic labour like washing dishes. It is this low bar that also renders the experiences I've shared unexceptional and therefore so often unnoticed. Sexist comments, intimidation, groping, violating boundaries, and aggression are seen as merely "typical" for men. But "typical" is dangerously interchangeable with "acceptable." "Boys will be boys," after all.”
― Vivek Shraya, I'm Afraid of Men.

“People’s lives here are easier and harder all at once. They’re never at risk, but their safety and stability can turn into a cage. They’re free to pursue their dreams, but they’re held back by the responsibilities that come along with them.”
― Dimitri Nasrallah, Hotline

“that progress is not always perceptible on the surface, it doesn’t always appear where we want to see it, even though it may be happening constantly and incrementally.”
― Dimitri Nasrallah, Hotline

“Lord Christ! when I think back
Upon my youth, and on my gaiety,
It tickles me to the bottom of my heart. . . .
That I have had my day in my time.
But age, alas! that poisons everything,
Has robbed me of my beauty and my vigor;
Let it go, farewell, the devil go with it!
The flour is gone, there is no more to say,
The chaff, as best I can, I must sell now;
But still I will attempt to be right merry.”
― Chaucer Geoffry Chaucer

“You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“I have my own printer. The luxury of this cannot be overstated. I randomly print out a document; I sigh happily as the printer spits it out, warm.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“quote by Mahatma Gandhi that affected me deeply: “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
― John Thompson, I Came As a Shadow: An Autobiography

“Follow your envy - it shows you what you want.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“We tend to think that the future happens later, but we're creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“How heavy my mind is,
filled with the past.
Is there enough room
for the world to penetrate?
It must go somewhere,
it cannot simply sit on the surface--

Stars gleaming over the water.
The leaves piled, waiting to be lit.

Insight, my sister said.
Now it is here.
But hard to see in the darkness.

You must find your footing
before you put your weight on it.”
― Louise Gluck, Winter Recipes from the Collective

“Look at us, she said. We are all of us in this room
still waiting to be transformed. This is why we search for love.”
― Louise Gluck, Winter Recipes from the Collective

“It’s interesting-most people think about therapy as something that involves going in and undoing what’s happened. But whatever your past experiences created in your brain, the associations exist and you can’t just delete them. You can’t get rid of the past.
Therapy is more about building new associations, making new, healthier default pathways. It is almost as if therapy is taking your two-lane dirt road and building a four-lane freeway alongside it. The old road stays, but you don’t use it much anymore. Therapy is building a better alternative, a new default. And that takes repetition, and time, honestly, it works best if someone understands how the brain changes. This is why understanding how trauma impacts our health is essential for everyone.”
― Bruce D. Perry, What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing