Pretty Things Quotes

“It's easiest to judge from distance. That's why the Internet has turned us all into armchair critics, experts at the cold dissection of gesture and syllable, sneering self-righteously from the safety of our screens. There, we can feel good about ourselves, validated that our flaws weren't as bad as theirs, unchallenged in our superiority. Moral high ground is a pleasant place to preach, even if the view turns out to be rather limited in scope.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“When you're documenting everything you do, you stop living life for yourself and start living it as a performance for others. You're never in the actual moment, just the response to the moment.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Nothing is ever as pure as it seems at first glance; there is always something more complicated to be found when you peel back the unmarred surface of pretty things.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Social media feeds the narcissistic monster that lives within us all, I would think to myself. It feeds it and grows it until the beast takes over and you are left outside the frame, just looking at images of this creature, like everyone else in your feed, wondering what it is that you birthed and why it's living the life you wish you had.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Perspective is, by nature, subjective. It's impossible to climb inside someone else's head, despite your best-or worst-intentions.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“This is the great horror of life: that mistakes are forever, and cannot be undone. You can never truly go back, even if you want to retrace your steps and take another route. The path has already disappeared behind you.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Maybe our greatest strength as human beings is also our greatest weakness, the need to love and be loved.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“On social media it's all or nothing: lavish praise or appalled outrage; sycophants or trolls. Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“But I suppose that's the point of it all, for Vanessa: To throw herself into the world she wants to inhibit in the hopes of forgetting the one in which she really lives. Who am I to say she's wrong to try? We all build our own delusions and then live inside them, constructing walls to conveniently hide the things we don't want to see. Maybe it means that we're crazy, or maybe it means that we're monsters, or maybe it's just the world we live in now makes it so hard to separate truth from image from dream.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“In the end, we are all our mothers’ children, no matter how saintly or evil they might be; and the loss of their love is the earthquake that cracks your foundation forever. It’s permanent damage.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Was it any wonder that people on the wrong side of the glass would eventually decide to take a hammer and break it, reach through and take some of it for themselves?”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“I inherited the very best circumstances if all. And yet, circumstances can change. The natural trajectory of your life can be utterly disrupted by one unexpected encounter, setting you so wildly off course that you're not quite sure if you'll ever find your way back to the path you were on.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“There is no one path in life that is set before you, I’m starting to realize; no one is making your decisions for you.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Even if when I met you I had not happened to like you, I should still have been bound to change my attitude, because when you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas. It is partly for this reason that I don’t mix much in literary circles, because I know from experience that once I have met & spoken to anyone I shall never again be able to show any intellectual brutality towards him, even when I feel that I ought to. —LETTER FROM GEORGE ORWELL TO STEPHEN SPENDER, APRIL 15, 1938”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“I don't really do social media. When you're documenting everything you do, you stop living life for yourself and start living it as a performance for others. You're never in the actual moment, just the response to the moment.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Sex—it can be about love, yes. And it’s wonderful when it’s that, and God, baby, I hope that’s what you’ve found. But it’s also a tool. Men use it to prove a point to themselves, about their power to take what they want. You’re just the first rung on the ladder of their world domination. And when that’s the kind of sex you’re having—which is most of the time—you got to make sure that you’re using it as a tool, too. Don’t let yourself be used up by them, all the time believing it’s some kind of equal relationship. Make sure you’re getting just as much out of it as they are.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Anything you do in fury’s service feels justifiable; no matter how petty, how small, how nasty or cruel.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“There are so many varieties of love - The Menu does not have just one flavor - and I see no reason why this can't be one of them. love can be anything you choose to wrap around the word, as long as the two people involved agree upon terms.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Smarts mean a lot in the world, but good looks even more.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“On social media it’s all or nothing: lavish praise or appalled outrage; sycophants or trolls. Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer”—Helen Keller.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Isn’t there more than this? Have I forgotten what it feels like to be in the moment? Who is watching me and do they honestly care about me at all?”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Imagine the freedom in being invisible like that! I would think. Imagine not caring whether anyone cares!”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“and that, in fact, for most people not born into privilege, the playing field is a steep incline and you are at the bottom with boulders tied to your ankles.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“They say DNA is destiny. And probably this is true for those with gift coded in their genes: say, a rare beauty or intelligence, the ability to run a four minute mile or dunk a basketball, or perhaps just innate cunning or insatiable drive. But for the rest of the world, those born without some obvious greatness, it's not your DNA that will get you ahead; it's the life you were born into. The opportunities you were (or weren't) handed on a silver platter. It's your circumstances.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Sometimes you have to pretend that a bad idea is a good idea because you have no control over the outcome, and all you can do is hope that adding your false optimism to the pile might tip the scale in the right direction after all.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“We moved into the cottage, and then to the bed. We shed our clothes en route, discarding T-shirts and socks like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Nothing is ever as pure as it seems at first glance; there is always something more complicated to be found if you peel back the unmarred surface of pretty things.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things

“Maybe first love is merely the inevitable emotional fallout of finding the first person who seems to give an honest shit about you.”
― Janelle Brown, Pretty Things