Posts tagged words to live by.

i’m not sad

monsterpussy:

warsanshire:

but the boys who are looking for sad girls always find me. i’m not a girl anymore and i’m not sad anymore. you want me to be a tragic backdrop so that you can appear to be illuminated, so that people can say ‘wow, isn’t he so terribly brave to love a girl who is so obviously sad?’ you think i’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star? i’ll swallow you whole. 

ugh warsan shire. everyone else just chuck it in, get receptionist jobs, get married. we’re done here.

Her words literally wound me with their beauty and truth. Everyone just give up everything.

If you want to change something about yourself, whether it is your hair color, your makeup, or your nose, I support you. If you do not, then I support you in that. I urge you to do exactly what you want to do to make yourself feel beautiful. And I’m not talking about beauty according to magazine standards or Hollywood standards, but your standards.

(via when-i-spin-away)

I came to another turning point—the terrible opportunity that people are given in their lives. The day that they discover to the tips of their toes that they’re assholes. And you have to work on from there. And decide what your values are. Which parts of you are no longer really necessary. They belong to childhood’s end.

Joni Mitchell, from a really great article.

A ‘girl like me’ is someone who doesn’t rest on her looks, who has had people tell me from day one, ‘You’re never going to get magazine covers because you are not pretty enough.’ I’m totally comfortable with that. I know my strong points: I work hard, I have talent, I’m funny and I’m a good person. […] I was always considered butch. Feeling beautiful to me is when I feel good in my leather pants and my husband grabs my ass. Or when I’m sitting on a mat and my daughter runs to me with complete joy. Beautiful has never been my goal. Joy is my goal — to feel healthy and strong and powerful and useful and engaged and intelligent and in love. It’s about joy. And there’s such joy now.

Pink

Secretary of State Clinton showed up to answer tough and sometimes ridiculous questions regarding the deadly September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. In the process, she offered a tutorial for today’s young women.

Key points:

1) When a man asks you a question and then refuses to look at you as you answer, just keep going. Don’t let his rudeness silence you.

2) When he interrupts you, return the favor.

3) When he says things you know are not true, correct him. Repeatedly.

4) When he attempts to bully you, mow him down with facts.

5) And whenever possible, smile. Nothing rattles an angry man like a woman who looks happy to annoy him.

Hillary Schools Congress and Teaches Girls by Connie Schultz on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent (via immlass)

(via andwhenithappens)

Over the past few days a fair few people have retweeted an excerpt from a show I made in 2009 in which a psychologist urged news organisations not to sensationalise their coverage of massacres, on the basis that this had the potential to inspire further tragedies. That may well be true, and there’s no harm pursuing it. But the best way to improve media coverage of massacres is to prevent massacres. And try as I might, I can’t think of a better way to prevent massacres than reducing the number of guns in circulation. Twenty children shot at close range with an assault rifle. You could argue that the choice of weapon is irrelevant; that a truly unhinged individual would still find the means to kill. Maybe that’s true; I don’t know. All I know is that 20 children were shot at close range with an assault rifle, and that only a lunatic nation wouldn’t try everything it could think of to make that less likely to happen again.

The Newtown shooting makes us feel helpless. We don’t need to be | Charlie Brooker | The Guardian (via clambistro)

(via clambistro)