@lainevierge

You get far enough into winter and you no longer believe it was ever warm or ever will be again.
Saint X: A Novel by Alexis Schaitkin

This was upstate New York, where the snow layered upon itself, rising like one of those out-of-control lemon meringue pies in the glass case at the Underhill Diner.
The Interestings: A Novel by Meg Wolitzer

Whiteness is the distinction many of us cling to when we have nothing else.
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss

I think you should define the word ‘gentrification,’ ” my husband tells me now. I ask him what he would say it means, and he pauses for a long moment. “It means that an area is generally improved,” he says finally, “but in such a way that everything worthwhile about it is destroyed.
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss

Our world inspires a certain level of paranoia. Perhaps it is a measure of intelligence—after all, everyone is being watched and controlled within borders they didn’t determine, exchanging paper someone else told us is valuable for things of actual value, living under a dangerous government since forever.
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy) by adrienne maree brown, Rodriguez, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

inspiring fear in others is often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for—a violence.
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss

caring for ourselves is “not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.“
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy) by adrienne maree brown, Rodriguez, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

She remembered it was August and they say August brings bad luck. But September would arrive one day like an exit. And September was for some reason a lighter and more transparent month.
Clarice Lispector, from The Complete Stories; “In Search for a Dignity,” (via writemeanna )

When the baby cries, she could be hungry or thirsty or angry or cranky or sick or sleepy or paranoid or jealous or she had planned something but it went horribly awry. So you’ll need to take care of that when it happens.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

particular neighborhoods are not as dangerous as the conditions within those neighborhoods. It’s a fine line but an important one, because if you don’t live in those conditions, you aren’t very likely to get killed. Not driving through, not walking through, not even renting an apartment.
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss

Part of the reason so few of us have a healthy relationship with pleasure is because a small minority of our species hoards the excess of resources, creating a false scarcity and then trying to sell us joy, sell us back to ourselves.
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy) by adrienne maree brown, Rodriguez, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

transjon:

cats are like. i am very small and have cute little triangle ears. also locking me out of the bathroom is a hate crime

Hunter S01E03

old TV is the gift that keeps on giving…

Christian America is made up of scary people, and I find it impossible to believe that they intend only to do good and to help others.
Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

erinlace-deactivated20200503:

riverwindphotography :

Streamside Wildflowers, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming: © riverwindphotography, August 2020

We are far more likely to be hurt by the food we eat, the cars we drive, or the bicycles we ride than by the people we live among. This may be lost on us in part because we are surrounded by a lot of noise that suggests otherwise.
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss

Your no makes the way for your yes. Boundaries create the container within which your yes is authentic. Being able to say no makes yes a choice.
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy) by adrienne maree brown, Rodriguez, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

jellyjer :

fiend of italian cuisine 🍝

What you want is a guy who is a little afraid of you. And you want to be a little afraid of him, too.
Saint X: A Novel by Alexis Schaitkin

Nationality is partly a matter of convenience.
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

Hunter S01E02

white Americans have tended, for hundreds of years now, to think of black Americans as either victims or villains—children or savages.
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss

teenageers :

us. there. now.

In this moment, we must prioritize the pleasure of those most impacted by oppression.
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy) by adrienne maree brown, Rodriguez, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

We didn’t go on a lot of family vacations when I was growing up,” he said. “The swankiest place my parents ever took me was the Pennsylvania Dutch country. We looked at people in old-fashioned clothes on horse and buggy, and my mother took pictures with her Polaroid Swinger, even though she wasn’t supposed to, and an Amish guy yelled at her, and my parents had a huge fight about it—so what else is new?
The Interestings: A Novel by Meg Wolitzer

In New York the ocean was an irrelevancy, a vestigial thing beyond and apart from the thing itself, the city: the buildings packed in tight as tissue stanching a nosebleed, a glass-and-steel rising that pierced the sky.
Saint X: A Novel by Alexis Schaitkin

Indenturing indigents is supposed to keep them employed, teach them a trade, feed them, house them, and keep them out of trouble.
Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler