#repress

This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#repression #society #strength #women #freedom

When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition. ↗

— James Hillman

#about #american #american tradition #century #christian

Now they have come to the place where their faith can no longer feed on the bread of repression and violence. They ask for the bread of liberty, of public equality, and public responsibility. It must not be denied them. ↗

— Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

#bread #come #denied #equality #faith

If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however, I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow--what's his name?--cannot respect that, then I'll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#desire #prayer #religion #repression #salvation

You can count the bruises on your heart easily enough, but numbering sins is a far tricker matter. Men are eternally forgetting for their benefit. They leave it to the World to remeber, and to the Outside to call them to harsh accout. One hundred Heavens . . . for one thousand Hells. ↗

— R. Scott Bakker

#sin #men

So when I read this story, it unlocked a volcano of unanswered questions, because the questions had never been asked. It was an opportunity to come to terms with the lot of repressed history - and history of repression. ↗

— Phillip Noyce

#because #been #come #had #history

Well, first I studied piano. I wasn't very satisfied because I though my teachers were dumb... and repressive. ↗

— Luc Ferrari

#dumb #first #i #piano #repressive

Being gay is a fundamental part of my being - the core of who I've always been, and the thing that I had repressed and run from all my life. ↗

— James McGreevey

#been #being #core #fundamental #gay

Because whipping an atlas at Jackson's head while he was flirt-touching that Frankie girl in geography would have been very satisfying. And beating him with the Eiffel Tower snowglobe while he kissed Cleo in French would have been tres cathartic. But she hadn't. Instead she'd been egg-like: a hard shell on the outside, and a runny mess on the inside. ↗

— Lisi Harrison

#crush #jealousy #repressing-emotions #school #jealousy

Repress the natural and it comes back even stronger: not everyone can be a fetishist ↗

— Philippe Lejeune

#repression #nature