Emily Calvert > Emily's Quotes

“When you really want something, you will find a way. When you don't really want something, you'll find an excuse.”
― Rachel Hollis

“And it was striking, how much less alone that could make you feel, because of course to be peopled at all was a high-order gift, but to find people beyond your people was nothing short of miraculous, finding a person away from home who felt like home and shifted, subsequently, the very notion of home, widening its borders.”
― Claire Lombardo, The Most Fun We Ever Had

“We cannot grow without challenge. Challenges routinely produce crises that severely test us. However, crises also offer us the greatest opportunities. People going through tough times typically feel isolated, and unsure what to do. When I face a crisis, I try to keep in mind a few simple concepts: we cannot control our destinies, but we can help to shape them; we must try to make life hop a bit, but we must also accept that we can only do the best we can.”
― Steven Callahan, Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea

“Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, nothing lasts forever.”
― Steven Callahan, Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea

“It’s like everyone around you has a copy of the script of life, but no one
gave it to you so you have to go in blind and hope you can muddle your way
through. And you’ll be wrong most of the time.”
― Tracey Garvis Graves, The Girl He Used to Know

“I am not going to sit around sweating my ass off just so men can feel more comfortable. It’s not my responsibility to not turn them on. It’s their responsibility to not be an asshole.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“DAISY: I used to care when men called me difficult. I really did. Then I stopped. This way is better.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“It’s okay to feel all of the stuff you’re feeling. You’re just becoming human again. You’re not doing life wrong; you’re doing it right. If there’s any secret you’re missing, it’s that doing it right is just really hard. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that’s what they’re for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. The secret is that you’re doing it right, and that doing it right hurts sometimes.”

I did not know, before that woman told me, that all feelings were for feeling. I did not know that I was supposed to feel everything. I thought I was supposed to feel happy. I thought that happy was for feeling and that pain was for fixing and numbing and deflecting and hiding and ignoring. I thought that when life got hard, it was because I had gone wrong somewhere. I thought that pain was weakness and that I was supposed to suck it up. But the thing was that the more I sucked it up, the more food and booze I had to suck down.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.
—Liz Gilbert”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Faces change with life's toll, but eyes remain a window to what was...”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“...it dawned on me the other day that, for me, the Internet has to be a meticulously curated digital space in which your uncle's vaguely racist tweets have no place.”
― Samantha Irby, Wow, No Thank You.: Essays

“He's not a bus - stop waiting for him. Catch the next one!”
― Samantha Irby, Wow, No Thank You.: Essays

“By opening our hearts, revealing our scars, we are made human and flawed and whole.”
― Mark T. Sullivan, Beneath a Scarlet Sky

“We never know what will happen next, what we will see, and what important person will come into our life, or what important person we will lose. Life is change, constant change, and unless we are lucky enough to find comedy in it, change is nearly always a drama, if not a tragedy. But after everything, and even when the skies turn scarlet and threatening, I still believe that if we are lucky enough to be alive, we must give thanks for the miracle of every moment of every day, no matter how flawed. And we must have faith in God, and in the Universe, and in a better tomorrow, even if that faith is not always deserved.”
― Mark T. Sullivan, Beneath a Scarlet Sky

“Relax" is a real tough one for me. Another tough one is "smile." "Smile" doesn't really work either. Telling me to relax or smile when I'm angry is like bringing a birthday cake into an ape sanctuary. You're just asking to get your nose and genitals bitten off.”
― Amy Poehler

“But since racism always hides under a respectable guise - usually the guise of patriotism and religion - a great many people loathed us for knocking holes in these respectable guises. It was realization that racial injustice was for the good of all society, not just for the good of the oppressed.”
― John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me

“That's right - sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our own difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.”
― 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

“Now I keep in mind that none of us can love and be loved without the possibility of loss but that there's a difference between knowledge and terror.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“Sometimes the only thing to do is yell, “Fuck!”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Illuminated Rumi

“Thus, our need to qualify that we are speaking about black history or women’s history suggests that these contributions lie outside the norm.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“However, I hope to have made clear that white supremacy is something much more pervasive and subtle than the actions of explicit white nationalists. White supremacy describes the culture we live in, a culture that positions white people and all that is associated with them (whiteness) as ideal. White supremacy is more than the idea that whites are superior to people of color; it is the deeper premise that supports this idea—the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“It’s the system, and our complacency in that system, that gives racism its power, not individual intent. Without that white supremacist system, we’d just have a bunch of assholes yelling at each other on a pretty even playing field—and may the best yeller win. But there is no even playing field right now. Over four hundred years of systemic oppression have set large groups of racial minorities at a distinct power disadvantage. If I call a white person a cracker, the worst I can do is ruin their day. If a white person thinks I’m a nigger, the worst they can do is get me fired, arrested, or even killed in a system that thinks”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“If someone confronts you with your privilege from a place of anger or hatred, if someone does not want to take the time or does not have the emotional energy to further explain to you where your privilege lies, know that it is still a kindness. Try to remember that the alternative to not being made aware of your privilege (no matter how it may sting) is your continued participation in the oppression of others. Someone is giving you an opportunity to do better, no matter how unpleasant the delivery. Thank them.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“There’s nothing feminist about having so many resources at your fingertips and choosing to be ignorant. Nothing empowering or enlightening in deciding that intent trumps impact. Especially when the consequences aren’t going to be experienced by you, but will instead be experienced by someone from a marginalized community.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“Sometimes being a good ally is about opening the door for someone instead of insisting that your voice is the only one that matters.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“You can argue that conservative values are at odds with feminist ideology, but ultimately the question has to be not only what women are we empowering, but also what are we empowering them to do. White women aren't just passive beneficiaries of racist oppression; they are active participants.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“Color is a fact. Race is a social construct. “We think we ‘see’ race when we encounter certain physical differences among people such as skin color, eye shape, and hair texture,” the Smedleys wrote. “What we actually ‘see’…are the learned social meanings, the stereotypes, that have been linked to those physical features by the ideology of race and the historical legacy it has left us.” And yet, observed the historian Nell Irvin Painter, “Americans cling to race as the unschooled cling to superstition.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents