Children don’t read ‘genres’; they read stories. Below a certain age, they don’t distinguish between ‘true’ and ‘not true,’ because they see no reason that a white rabbit shouldn’t possess a pocket watch, that whales shouldn’t talk, or that sentient beings shouldn’t live on other planets and travel in spaceships. Science-fiction tropes aren’t read as ‘science fiction’; they’re read as fiction. And fiction is read as reality. And sometimes reality lives under the bed and has very large teeth, and it’s no use pretending otherwise.
Margaret Atwood, The New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2012 (via 24hourcharleston)
I recommend everyone read this entire piece, if they can! It’s wonderful.
(via helio-phile)
Source: electronicsquid
The feeling that death is inevitable comes to us from ordinary experience; the feeling that new life is inevitable comes to use from myth and fable. The latter is therefore both more true and more important.
Northrop Frye
Everyone should have access to therapy. I don’t see it as a bad thing. It’s the same as having a personal trainer, but cerebral. It’s part of human maintenance.
Source: psychotherapy
I often feel that, in so many areas of what we might call progressive politics or ideologies, we leave ourselves last. We retain that distorting lens of what we’ve been taught, not what we actually think. So – we celebrate a diverse range of body shapes, but tell ourselves we’re too fat to be attractive. We think gender fabulousness is a great thing – and then worry we’re too different to be accepted. We know that kyriarchal lies are, well, lies…and then listen to them, echoing around us, making us feel ashamed/unworthy/less than.
CN Lester (The beauty myth and me… « a gentleman and a scholar)
(via sexisnottheenemy)
Source: cnlester.wordpress.com
“You can call this ‘class warfare’ all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that ‘common sense.’”
— President BARACK OBAMA
(via motherjones)
Source: inothernews
100,000 Airplanes (3.11)
- Bartlet: A President stood up. He said we will land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. You know what we knew when he said that? Nothing. We didn't know anything. We didn't know about the lunar surface. We didn't know how to land one of these things. All we'd ever done is crash it into the ocean. And God knows we could figure out how to land soft. We didn't know how to blast off again, but a President said we're gonna do it, and we did it. So I ask you, why shouldn't I stand up and say we are going to cure cancer in ten years? I'm really asking.
- Josh: Well, how close are we to really being able to do this?
- Bartlet: Nobody knows.
- Josh: Then -
- Bartlet: Toby?
- Toby: It'll be seen as a political ploy.
- Bartet: Why?
- CJ: It can be seen - excuse me - it can be seen as self-serving.
- Bartlet: How?
- CJ: Using cancer to deflect attention from MS.
- Bartlet: You think people with cancer care what my motives are? You think their families do?
- CJ: I'm saying -
- Bartlet: Joey?
- Joey: I agree with everything that's been said, except, I don't think they'll see it as deflecting the MS. I think they'll see it as deflecting the censure.
- Bartlet: Once again, why would somebody...?
- Joey: Everybody cares about motive, Mr. President.
- Bartlet: I didn't -
- Kenny: She said, "Everybody cares about motive," sir.
- Bartlet: Sam?
- Sam: Yes sir?
- Bartlet: Why shouldn't I do it?
- Sam: I think you should. I think ambition is good. I think overreaching is good. I think giving people a vision of government that's more than Social Security checks and debt reduction is good. I think government should be optimistic.
Source: westwingquotes
You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.
The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.
Isak Dinesen
Source: junglewalkers
“You could say that young people were desired because they had smooth bodies and excellent reproductive chances, but you’d mostly be missing the point. There was something much sadder in it than that. Something like constant regret, the sense that your whole life was an error, a mistake, that you were desperate to redo.”
—Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
Source: slaughterhouse90210
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