Jolene > Jolene's Quotes

“All my life I have overheard, all my life I have listened to what people will let slip when they think you are part of their we. A we is so powerful. It is the most corrupt and formidable institution on earth. Its hands are full of the crispest and most persuasive currency. Its mouth is full of received, repeating language. The we closes its ranks to protect the space inside it, where the air is different. It does not protect people. It protects its own shape.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“A woman's body always stands on the outskirts of the town, verging on uncivilization. A think paper gown is all that separates it from the wilderness. Half of its whole being is devoted to remembering how to live in the woods. This is why Witch, this is why whore, this is why Unlucky, and this is why Unclean. This is why attempts to govern the female body always have the feeling of a last resort, because the female body is fundamentally ungovernable. Barbie, the neatest, tannest, blondest tall who ever existed. Barbie, from the Greek, meaning foreign or strange.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“It is probably the last conversation like this the seminarian and I will have. After his ordination, particular friendships with women will be discouraged. I understand why, but in a wider sense, it is frightening. If you are not friends with women, they are theoretical to you.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“The story of a family is always a story of complicity. It's about not being able to choose the secrets you've been let in on.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“We want to call work what is work so that eventually we might rediscover what is love.”
― Sarah Jaffe, Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

“The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.' What's the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“The great shame of your life is that you weren't raised Catholic," James said to me. "You've got suffering, but you don't have the aesthetic.”
― Kyle Dillon Hertz, The Lookback Window

“There's a chance my present has ceased. If that's the case—if I'm gone—I had two hopes: to map a way of healing form a form of violence I never totally understood, if it's understandable at all, and to provide a guide on how a person in the present of their lives might speak the unspeakable. Language failed me for many years. All I did was run and scream. That might be my legacy, too.”
― Kyle Dillon Hertz, The Lookback Window

“Some people talk about their PTSD as if it's a badge of honor, and I roll my fucking eyes. I'm not trying to be the PDST-esy of them all. I ignored it for a really long time. I overdosed at seventeen. I had no home for a little while. Every night I have nightmares. It's gonna end my marriage, too. I want it to end. He can't stomach my suffering and hates that he can't help me and doesn't want to do what will actually end this era. I think he loves me too much to see me in pain, and the pain he does see reminds him of his own, which is just as fucked as mine. Why can't just fucking let me cry? When the men came over, they would drug me, and I still crave those drugs to this day. Every man I look at either reminds me if those men or they don't. All men are mirrors. Whether they want to be or not. I think about those men all the time. (117)”
― Kyle Dillon Hertz, The Lookback Window

“It's such a little thing, this skirt. For other girls, maybe it's makeup or a sport or having sex or not having sex or writing or music or kicking ass in school or wearing your hair so it looks like the sun's unruly rays. I think every girl has a thing or two, tiny details in her life that say This is me. I'm done hiding. I'm done feeling ashamed.”
― Ashley Herring Blake, Girl Made of Stars

“It’s changed me forever, but changed doesn’t have to mean broken.”
― Ashley Herring Blake, Girl Made of Stars