Quotes

Quote

Advice to the witch children:
1. Step softly. 
2. Coat your words in honey, but keep your nails as claws.
3. Listen to the ghosts.
4. Carry always a bird in your chest and a lion in your head.
5. Know that age is not wisdom, and there is as much to be learned from trees as from the books they become.
6. You are not born with a family. Make one. 
7. Remember that a thing does not need purpose to have beauty.
8. Do not allow yourself to become chained to logic and order.
9. Revel in chaos, then bend it to your will.
10. Use your wide eyes for watching, your rabbit feet for running, your small size for slipping away unseen.
11. Let them underestimate you.
12. When you open your mouth and frogs leap out, do not be ashamed.
13. You are the changeling children, magic born into small bodies with untried hearts. 
Do not waste them.

kem (via punkgods)
Quote

Do you really believe … that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident.

Moderata Fonte, pseudonym of Modesta Pozzo (1555-1592). She was an Italian writer from Venice who wrote religious and romantic poetry. Modesta is best known, however, for the posthumously published The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men (via historical-nonfiction)
Quote

Black Americans have a problem.

No matter how hard they try, they can’t seem to avoid getting harassed, beaten or killed by the police. They’re constantly being told how to change this fact: respect the law, respect authority, respect themselves, respect each other. They’re being told, in so many words, that the problem is them.

But the truth is, black Americans have been trying to escape conflict for years. They’ve taken notes, worked hard and gained access to some of the best schools and jobs available. They’ve pulled up their pants and tied their ties, become students and professors and everything else America claimed would make them respectable men and women.

They’ve done it assuming it would shield them from harm. Yet every day, they face the reality that this doesn’t seem to be working.

Zak Cheney Rice, Respectability is a myth
(via micdotcom)
Quote

The twenties are as frenetic a decade as the teens. You have a voice inside your head repeating I want, I want, I want, but you don’t know what you want or how to get it. You hardly know who you are. You go on instinct. And your instinct mostly pushes you toward adventures you won’t grasp until you look back on them. Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward, some sage once said.

Erica Jong, in Fear of Flying’s Afterword.
(via the-healing-nest)
Quote

Learn to put on your bracelets and zip up your dresses by yourself. There will be times when you will be alone.
Get on a long plane ride. Look out the window. Understand the immensity of our world. Understand your insignificance. Understand your absolute importance.
Press the send button. If you don’t say it now, you never will.
Do not sneer at happiness or roll your eyes at sadness. Be aware that apathy is not healthy.
You are more than the amount of people who want to have sex with you.
That pit in your stomach when he doesn’t text you back, it shouldn’t be there. No one should be able to control you like that.
Shopping is cathartic. Buy the shoes and deal with one-ply toilet paper for a while.
It will get better, but it will never be perfect. Learn to live through the small moments of happiness. When they disappear, remember they will resurface.
I promise that cookie will not change anything (except that it will make you smile).
Please, please, take care of yourself. You are everything to somebody. You are everything to your self. That alone is enough.

things to remember (via bl-ossomed)
Quote

Non-black students should be very hesitant before speaking in politically black spaces. If you can Google it, take a class, or ask a friend then don’t speak. You will be doing everyone in the room a favor. You are contributing to the mobility of the discussion by not contributing. Only in non-black, non-political spaces and in the event that a black voice is being silenced, you may echo them. You have non-black privilege and may be taken more seriously. If you really want to help the cause just re-iterate what has already been said. Otherwise, do not steal their agency and ownership of a narrative by speaking on behalf of them. You cannot “engage in conversation” because black people and their experiences have nothing to do with you. By not speaking sometimes, you are able to contribute by simply listening.

Marwa Aboubaker. At UCI: Do #BlackLivesMatter?

(Marwa is at 3asal-eswed)