#ask

Boys will be boys, that's what people say. No one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display. We are to use gossip as a means of policing ourselves -- this way those who do succumb to sex but are not damaged by it are damaged instead by peer malice. Girls demand a covenant because if one gives in, others will be expected to do the same. We are to remain united in cruelty, ignorance, and aversion. Or we are to starve the flesh from our bones, penalizing the body for its nature, castigating ourselves for advances we are powerless to prevent. We are to make false promises then resist the attentions solicited. Basically we are to become expert liars. (p. 65) ↗

— Hilary Thayer Hamann

#girls #hamann #identity #masks #sexuality

It's not that I've suddenly become stronger or that something has changed. I'm still shaking. But... We don't have to let those fears stop us. What's most important is that we try to rise above our weakness. ↗

— Natsuki Takaya

#fruits-basket #yuki #change

When I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature. ↗

— Lisel Mueller

#nature

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. ↗

— Dag Hammarskjold

#ask #attend #because #become #cravings

They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds. ↗

— Wilt Chamberlain

#sports #sports

So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane. ↗

— John Green

#lookingforalaska #people

Because even the smallest of words can be the ones to hurt you, or save you. ↗

— Natsuki Takaya

#hurt #save #words #yuki #words

At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved. ↗

— John Green

#hurt

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#i #judge #judge me #made #me

Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. ↗

— John Green

#looking-for-alaska #pudge #thought