June, out of context
this month's quotables
Each day I pause to write down the things that bring me joy: the places where I experience happiness (‘found joy’) and the places where I contribute to the happiness of others (‘brought joy’).
I also use this notebook to collect random quotes that I find interesting or meaningful or that stand out. At the end of each month I’ll post these random quotes, shared out of context.
Communities act as social vaccines and are equally important in times of transitions. (Buja Dargupta)
The day you stop racing is the day you win the race. (Bob Marley)
you live through . . . that little piece of time that is yours, but that piece of time is not only your own life, it is the summing-up of all the other lives that are simultaneous with yours. It is, in other words, History, and what you are is an expression of History. (Robert Penn Warren)
All progress starts by telling the truth. (Bill Wilson)
The way to measure your progress is backward against where you started, not against your ideal. (Dan Sullivan)'
Will it make the boat go faster? (Ben Hunt-Davis)
The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible. (Toni Cade Bambara)
I think this [human] is suffering from memories. (Sigmund Freud)
Keep your moon
We have our own
Keep your army
We have our name
Keep your flag
We have our fruits and in
All the right colors.
(Hala Alyan)
One usually gets better at whatever one does on a regular basis. If one does not write on a regular basis, one will get better at not writing. In fact, one will develop an astonishing array of skills designed to improve and extend one’s not writing. (Chon A. Noriega)
Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Mary Oliver)
If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoy it. (Zora Neale Hurston)
Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations. (June Jordan)
It’s okay to be angry. You just can’t drink about it anymore. Lisa from TLC.
How can I know what I think until I see what I say? (E. M. Forester)
I’m exhausted by my own hypocrisy. (Martha Beck)
Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don't belong. You will always find it because you've made that your mission. Stop scouring people's faces for evidence that you're not enough. You will always find it because you've made that your goal. (Brené Brown)
You can’t solve a problem with the thinking that created it. (Albert Einstein)
Curiosity over correctness.
Just because someone hates America doesn’t make them not a fascist. (Wonkette, re: Julian Assange)
“Motivation” is a product of good teaching, not its prerequisite. (J.G. Biggs)
It’s a righteous battle against a man who chooses revenge over a child. (Danny)
Active addiction is an algorithm, a crushing sadness. The story is what comes after. (Kaveh Akbar)
You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should have acted better. (Anne Lamott)
Everyone has a little Karen inside. (Jenn)
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
Three o’clock is always too late or early for anything you want to do. (Jean-Paul Sartre)
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. (James Baldwin)
By nature, what we do is ephemeral, but the experience will last forever. (Tom Colicchio, Top Chef).
I deserve to be filled the same way I pour.
The brain is an organ of places. (Kevin McCauley, Pleasure Unwoven)
John told me sundials often have mottos engraved on them. John says ‘tedious and brief’ is one.
What do you mean? Your life is tedious and brief. All sundial mottos are sad like that.
There are hundreds of these mottos. ‘Life passes like the shadow’. ‘Make haste but slowly.’ ‘Use the hours, don't count them.’ ‘Even as you watch, I'm fleeing.’ ‘Soon comes night.’
These little reminders are out there, hidden in crannies around the world. I recently happened upon a sundial in the cemetery of an old Catholic mission next to a grave. Because of John, I knew to look for the motto.
It read, Neil Boney Hodier, DM Pradidi: ‘I did nothing good today, I have lost a day.’ (S-Town, Chapter II)
Living means to hold the astonishingly beautiful and unbearably hard things in the same palm. (Suleika Jaouad)
In the coming years, we will hear, again, that anger is a destructive force, to be controlled. Watch carefully, because not everyone is asked to do this in equal measure. Women, especially, will be told to set our anger aside in favor of a kinder, gentler approach to change.
This is a false juxtaposition. Reenvisioned, anger can be the most feminine of virtues: compassionate, fierce, wise, and powerful.
The women I admire most — those who have looked to themselves and the limitations and adversities that come with our bodies and expectations that come with them — have all found ways to transform their anger into meaningful change. In them, anger has moved from debilitation to liberation.
Your anger is a gift you give to yourself and the world that is yours. In anger, I have lived more fully, freely, intensely, sensitively, and politically. If ever there was a time not to silence yourself, to channel your anger into healthy places and choices, this is it. (Soraya Chemaly)
If you’re gay, then you’re gay
If you’re straight, well, that’s great!
If you fall in-between that’s the best place to be
You’ve got so many options
Every fish in the see wants to kiss you.
(Everyone is Gay, by A Great Big World)
“We love you, but it’s time” (on a sign to President Joe Biden)
I'm not a huge Anne Lamott fan (too much God stuff), but that quote resonates with me. I've written a lot about my dad, a fair bit of which deals with his anger issues, and I've gotten pushback from family members who seem to feel that only the good parts of people are worth remembrance, even though my words tend to show forgiveness and compassion and an attempt to understand.