Push and Pull Quotes

“I feel the overwhelming ache from surviving day after day in this
miserable system that looks like a miserable world.
To live is to feel everything, and to feel everything is to ask
for an unbearable existence.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“I have heard that we are stupid for voting against our self interest,
and I know how hard it is to vote in my state.
I have heard that we are willfully uneducated,
and I have seen our artificially low property taxes
create our underfunded school system.
I have heard criticism from the experts,
but I have seen nothing but classism disguised
as neoliberal conjecture.
You cannot understand where I come from
if you are not also from there. I mean
that words fail
and nuance exists
and the enemy is never who we are taught to hate.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“Perhaps this is what life is -
just being
with each other.

And perhaps this is also what death is,
because the fossils of the amphibian and the mammal were found,
curled up together:
perhaps because of broken ribs and shared heat,
or perhaps because of the universal need we have for each other.
A flood buried the two together, alive,
and although they sang unheard pleas,
they were singing together.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“And when I say I love you,
I mean that you can show me your darkest fire your soul can produce,
and I will love you enough to sit with you until the smoke clears.

Leave your disclaimers at the door.
There is no convincing me to not love you.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“And when I say I love you,
I mean that I will see the ugliest parts of you,
and I will still love you enough to know that is not who you are.
That is only what you have to survive.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“You see, when you grow up
with a worldview shaped by the same ideas in
school, work, home, and everywhere else-
you are destined to be wrong when you go anywhere else.
We cannot find conclusions
on our own
when premises are
intentionally kept out of our reach.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“You are worthy of a life of living
instead of
a life of surviving.
Act like it. Fight like it. Live like it.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“The end of the world does not require our recognition,
only our quiet acceptance.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“We throw away our consciousness, our ability to be present, just
creating a heartless and disconnected world
that we do not even want to be in.
We want more
because there is more, but
we are too passive to fight for it.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“To live in a nonsensical system is to constantly try to
make things make sense,
but sense
is not profitable either.

It is not profitable
for the stream to flow,
for the tree to stand,
for the animals to prance and sit and be.

We have been conditioned to prioritize what is profitable,
and we all walk around with a
hole in our heart
because being is not profitable.
Only wanting is.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“To be a part of the universal is just to be,
and to want anything out of life undermines life itself.
This life is neutral to me and you.
This life does not give a shit about what you think it owes you.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“We forget we are making history whether or not we think we are worthy of being remembered.

We are here.
History books are always being written.
The flood is here, and there are countless lifeless bodies in the current.
The flood does not give a shit. It just floods.
Every day there is a new strain, a new disaster, or a new reason to stop fighting. Still,
we are here.

Fighting to survive is not new.
But, let us not forget
that evolution has
always
been a function of extinction.

Life must go on, somehow.
Overwhelming loss suffocates us just as much as the pollution.
But, every time there is another reason to not fight,
we must remember:

Those of us who fight the hardest,
who evolve despite,
are those of us
who shape the backbones
of those who are to follow us.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“We forget
that the days we are just getting through add up,
and that history does not feel like history to those in the middle of it.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“To survive is to face the truth that man made this extinction.
Survival and grief are too often felt together.
How do we live in a world without the millions who died in the pandemic?
How do we live in the same world with those responsible for the loss of so many of us?”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“To live was to recover,
and to recover was to survive.
To survive was exhausting,
but it was surviving, still.
And what else is there?”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“Time with you has become my most precious currency.
This love is our love, and oh,
how priceless it is
to have my heart
and your heart
at this very intersection of both
time and space.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“My home is full of targets,
and they have been hit. Over and over and over.
Meanwhile, the bullseyes sit in penthouses and mansions,
unaffected, watching us
scramble over the arrows.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“I come from a line of people
who could not discern their exploitation
from someone else’s:
people who will always stop for the car that is pulled over to the side of the road,
but participate in a culture
curated by a ruling class
that individualizes
and disconnects
the marginalized.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“I have started to spend my Fridays
playing tennis with a boy from my class,
and he said we would only do it as long as the weather permitted.
I have started looking forward to Fridays.
It is getting colder everyday,
this is the worst part of living in New England:
how quickly the seasons change.

But what a joy it is to have something,
anything,
just for a little while.
What a privilege it is to hold something so precious,
so small,
so unspoken,
and to wince when you have to let go.
What a treat to have so much life
grace these fingertips,
to love so much
that I now know such loss.

What a curse
to have it all move so quickly,
to have it be
out of reach
so fast.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“I am the body,
and I am the rocks in the pockets,
and I am the water.
There is no evading myself.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“Did you know that attack dogs are often female?
Did you know that women protect with
the most ferocity
in most animal kingdoms,
that our teeth are for more than smiling?
Us girls are many things, and
weak has never been one of them.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“Did you know that attack dogs are often female?
Did you know that women protect with
the most ferocity
in most animal kingdoms,
that our teeth are for more than smiling?
Us girls are many things, and
weak has never been one of them.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull