“When you are passionate about something, doing that thing for the sake of doing it is not even possible. Passion will never settle for good enough. Passion can never be a pastime. You will either do it to make it count, or you won’t. Therein lies the secret between writers who make it, and writers who don’t.”
—Therein Lies the Secret « Where the (not-so)Wild Things Are
June 2011
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“You don’t want to start setting up another rule book, like: “This is how you’re a feminist. And this is the way you dress. And this is the way you act. And this is the way you protest.” It’s like, some people protest carrying signs. Some people protest by making activist radical music. Sometimes people try to just make it through a day and not kill themselves, and that’s their activism for right then, because that’s all they have.”
—Kathleen Hanna (via riotisnotquiet)
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“It’s going to pass,” Ms. Quinn told her partner as her eyes welled with tears.
A few moments later, it did.
” —‘It’s Going to Pass,’ Quinn Tearfully Told Her Partner - NYTimes.com
“Try this the next time you meet a little girl. She may be surprised and unsure at first, because few ask her about her mind, but be patient and stick with it. Ask her what she’s reading. What does she like and dislike, and why? There are no wrong answers. You’re just generating an intelligent conversation that respects her brain. For older girls, ask her about current events issues: pollution, wars, school budgets slashed. What bothers her out there in the world? How would she fix it if she had a magic wand? You may get some intriguing answers. Tell her about your ideas and accomplishments and your favorite books. Model for her what a thinking woman says and does.”
—Lisa Bloom: How to Talk to Little Girls
“Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What’s missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments.”
—Lisa Bloom: How to Talk to Little Girls
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
—The Velveteen Rabbit (via alexbracken)
“While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices… Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (via bookshelvesofdoom)
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Doing what one wants to do because one wants to do it is hard for a lot of people, but I think it’s particularly hard for women. We are, after all, the gender onto which a giant Here To Serve button has been eternally pinned. We’re expected to nurture and give by the very virtue of our femaleness, to consider other people’s feelings and needs before our own. I’m not opposed to those traits. The people I most admire are in fact nurturing and generous and considerate. Certainly, an ethical and evolved life entails a whole lot of doing things one doesn’t particularly want to do and not doing things one very much does, regardless of gender.
But an ethical and evolved life also entails telling the truth about oneself and living out that truth.
” —DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #77: The Truth That Lives There - The Rumpus.net
oh, courtney: SLATE'S 10 TIPS ON WRITING YA FICTION →
courts.tumblr.com
(read the original article here)
01. Remember! Your audience can’t vote yet, so you don’t have to worry about giving them too much to think about.
02 In fact, the less thinking and the more immaturity you bring to the table the better. No shame.
03. If you aren’t sure your dialogue is…
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…Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.
But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.
” —This is a must-read: My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant - NYTimes.com