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Quotes

  • Natasha Lyonne:
    “First of all, everyone is entitled to at least one nervous breakdown in a lifetime."
  • krisjohn:
    "I hope we have to go through all of this crap because out of an infinite number of timelines, this is the only one where we survive. Otherwise it's hard to justify."
  • mightshould:
    "I'm coping. That's a major accomplishment. Anything else is bonus."
  • Mary Rodgers:
    "So I asked the shrink: When you're depressed because of actual things that are depressing, are there any drugs that can make you feel better? And he said no, which was even more depressing."
  • David Sedaris, Happy-Go-Lucky:
    "I figured my post-college life would be pretty much like the one I'd been leading for the past decade: work some little job I didn't have to put much into, then come home and do my own stuff. It was the life that most of my friends had, and half my family." "It's a consequence of putting stuff out there--you're going to get reactions."
  • Kristina Marusic:
    "There likely aren’t a ton of people on this planet—let alone within your geography or social circles—whose moral compass, sense of humor, Netflix addictions, dietary restrictions, and idiosyncrasies sync up with yours closely enough to make you want to hitch your wagon to them for the long-haul (and the internet is making us all even picker)."
  • John Oliver:
    "Let this be a lesson that you absolutely don’t want to fuck with someone who has the patience, attention to detail, and sustained anger to crochet their resentment into a handmade garment."
  • Gail Donovan, quoted in "Knitting Yarns" in the essay "Knitted Goods"
    "I love taking what is basically a long string and constructing a three-dimensional object. I love thinking about how somebody figured out how to do that!"
  • Amber A’Lee Frost:
    "It’s not just bad for a person to rely on their weakest skills for survival; it’s unsustainable and immiserating."
  • Michael Che:
    “You know what else makes you do crazy things? Crazy,”
  • August and Annie/Isaiah, "One Last Stop."
    "Does it ever, like...I don't know. Make you lonely? To love somebody who can't meet you there?" "Sometimes. But, you know, that feeling?" When you wake up in the morning and you have somebody to think about? Somewhere for hope to go? It's good. Even when it's bad, it's good."
  • Katie Brennan:
    "The Office taught me that love isn’t always an immediate burst of rainbows and butterflies; sometimes the best kind of love is a quiet, enduring, and steadfast process. When you really love someone, you know they are worth putting in time and effort. Even if you entertain the thought of someone else during the process, i.e. you get yourself a Karen, you know they can’t compare to your person. No amount of time can make that connection fade, so whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, you wait for your stars to align. It might take your company casually hosting a Casino Night, or a heartfelt post it note attached to an Office Olympics “medal,” but eventually your time comes—and when it does, it’s pretty much the best thing ever."
  • Jane Tyson Clement:
    "We don't notice the strange way things come about while they are coming about. It is only afterwards that we see the pattern..."
  • "Candace Kahn," Almost Romance:
    "You can't blow off a good story just because it's challenging."
  • Nick Cave:
    "I prefer to say that I have made, for reasons of survival, a commitment to the uncertain nature of the world. This is where my heart lies. I suspect it always has."
  • Ted Lasso:
    "I love meeting people's moms. It's like reading an instruction manual as to why they're nuts."
  • Ask Amy:
    "My point is that you can lay out your plans, but the world might have other ideas."
  • supercrayon:
    "But I kept thinking there’s a future me a week or a month or a year away that is through this. That future me is not plagued by uncertainty, they know what happened and they’re looking back at how things played out. I liked to think that future me was sending strength and love to present me. Sometimes now, present me in fact does send strength and love back towards past me. Your future selves know what happened. The you of a week or a month from now knows, and has already started to plan your next moves. I hope strength and love are rippling up and down the timeline between yourselves."
  • Christina Long (Washington Post)
    “WHY ARE NONE OF MY INTERESTS WORTH ANYTHING IN DOLLARS,”
  • Michael Diamond:
    “People get frustrated when they can’t see the future,” says Diamond. “The future looks scary if you’re telling them it’s just staying at home for the next 12 to 18 months. You shouldn’t really be that surprised when at least a fraction of them get angry."
  • Seanan McGuire:
    "Please stop trying to solve me. I'm not a problem."
  • Morrie Morgan, in "Work Song" by Ivan Doig:
    "I don't know any cure for being myself. The lotion for that hasn't been concocted yet."
  • Jason Mendoza:
    “Sometimes you just gotta huck a Molotov cocktail at a drone and see what happens.”
  • Augusten Burroughs:
    "But impossible is a concept that makes one's heart laugh and throw peanuts at the television."
  • Augusten Burroughs:
    "Even if things aren't catastrophic now, catastrophe has always followed me. Life unfolds, right? All the time, it's unfolding, and I'm going to follow it."
  • Augusten Burroughs:
    "My life has never really been “happily ever after.” I’ve always had conflict and disaster follow me around like a shadow, and I can’t really believe that will suddenly stop now that I’m happily living in Connecticut with three dogs. We’re just going to have to see."
  • Jacqui:
    “If you have a job where you’re not coming home with stories, it’s time to leave. That simply is our qualification. Healthcare helps. Benefits are nice, but oh my god, how do you not come home with stories? It is the easiest qualification, but it’s true. My feeling is if you don’t have a story, it wasn’t a good day."
  • armeowda:
    "Many people can cast their affections broad and bright as floodlights, but others of us are laser beams, and when something actually trips our attraction/affection sensors it can feel like a certain kind of instant precision strike, and it can leave a mark forever."
  • Stan Tatkin
    "There's actually nothing more difficult on the planet than another person."
  • Lani Diane Rich:
    "What doesn't kill you makes you stranger."
  • Heather Havrilesky:
    "Do they let me write these words because I’m good at it, or do they let me do it because I’m an entertainingly crazy person who is slowly but surely unraveling before 50,000-to-100,000 sets of eyeballs each week?"
  • Justin Peters:
    "The simple lesson that Millionaire taught me is that if you want to change your life—either by winning a lot of money on television or by some more prosaic means—at some point you are going to have to take a risk. Unless you are John Carpenter, you will eventually have to step into the unknown, bet on yourself, and hope that you are making the right decision."
  • Leslie Jones
    "Women are the same as humans."
  • Anne Lamott:
    “If you’re paying attention and making your own life as beautiful and rich and fun as it can be, you might just attract someone who’s doing the same thing,” she said. “You can give up on tracking someone down with your butterfly net.” “Never give up, no matter how things look or how long they take. Don’t quit before the miracle.”
  • Seanan McGuire:
    "If what I say doesn’t help you, ask someone else, until you find the person whose reply tells you how to kick the damn door down."
  • Grangousier:
    "It's 2018. There's a realistic chance of pretty much anything happening if it's ridiculous enough."
  • Joy:
    "I feel a constant low level of stress every day, just by virtue of existing in my environment,"
  • Fancy Feast:
    "When she was on a bad date, she would go to the bathroom, hit her nose until she got a nosebleed, and excuse herself, because it was easier to punch herself in the face than suffer the consequences of rejecting a man."
  • Ber:
    "Get your freak on, screw the powers that would deny you."
  • Lee Bradford:
    "Lee? Why does all this weird shit only seem to happen to you? Well, disembodied voice from nowhere-statistically, it has to happen somewhere."

Speed-Reading List

  • Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary
    Reviewed July 15. (***)
  • Rebecca Ross: A River Enchanted
    Reviewed July 14. (***)
  • Ben Aaronovitch: Whispers Under Ground
    Reviewed July 12. (***)
  • Edited by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Caland-Thomson.: About Us: Essays From the Disability Series of the New York Times
    Reviewed July 11. (****)
  • Logan Ury: How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love
    Read July 10. (***)
  • Michele Lent Hirsch.: Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine
    Reviewed July 9. (****)
  • Tanita S Davis: Figure It Out, Henri Weldon
    Reviewed July 8. (***)
  • Ben Aaronovitch: Moon Over Soho
    Reviewed June 27. (***)
  • Ben Aaronovitch: Midnight Riot/Rivers of London (why 2 titles?!)
    Reviewed June 23. (***)
  • John Scalzi: When The Moon Hits Your Eye
    Reviewed June 17. (***)
  • Caitlin Rozakis: Dreadful
    Reviewed June 16. (****)
  • Caitlin Rozakis: The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association
    Reviewed June 13. (****)
  • Cale Dietrich: The Rules of Royalty
    Reviewed June 12. (***)
  • Seanan McGuire: Tidal Creatures
    Reviewed June 8. (**)
  • Rebecca Yarros: Onyx Storm
    Reviewed June 7. (****)
  • Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka.: Heiress Takes All
    Reviewed June 5. (****)
  • Sarah Wynn-Williams: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
    Reviewed June 4. (****)
  • Cady Coleman: Sharing Space: An Astronaut's Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change
    Reviewed June 3. (****)
  • Jesse Q. Sutanto: Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)
    Reviewed June 2. (****)
  • Stephanie Burgis: Wooing the Witch Queen
    Reviewed June 1. (****)
  • Amy Lea: Woke Up Like This
    Reviewed May 31. (****)
  • Mary Robinette Kowal: The Martian Contingency
    Reviewed April 27. (****)
  • Kelly and Zach Weinersmith: A City On Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, And Have We Really Thought This Through?
    Reviewed April 26. (****)
  • Rebecca Yarros: Iron Flame
    Reviewed April 7. (**)

« Ridiculous stuff | Main | Chill pills and F-bombs »

March 14, 2020

Heartwarming stuff roundup

"Here's what I'm thinking these days.

Since we don't have a choice, this is the best time possible to find value in slowing down. You can't know whether or when or how long, so, okay. Here's today. What can you do with today? What can you do, bake, read. Whom can you call who has gotten nothing from you but texts. What pile hasn't been sorted through because you've been too busy.

What changes can you plan to make now, to apply whenever you're out and about again, to alleviate your concerns about feeling separate.

Your parents will have to worry about your parents. You, just enjoy them. Call, write, Facetime/Skype. Decide to watch the same show so you can talk about it later. 

And, if you're like me, you can remind yourself 12 x per day that this happened in the streaming era, so the world as we know it can wait."

"I should have said upfront that the slowing down was bad for us, horribly timed, and took away some things we will never get back--and put us in an awkward, possibly even dangerous position in at least one respect. It's not all homemade soup and movies.

So that's the preamble to the "okay, I guess I have to find some value in slowing down." Because it's there, it's done, and here we are. And it will go a whole lot better if I keep the frame around the good parts I can manage instead of the bad parts I can't.

If there are people out there who aren't worried about loved ones or a scary financial impact of some kind, then I don't know any of them personally. The costs will be immense, and we all will bear them. I just hope the response is quick and decisive on providing relief. I realize it doesn't lighten the burden you carry, but you're not alone in carrying it."

Posted at 04:24 PM in Current Affairs, Tree-Huggin' Hippie Crap, World Goes To Hell |

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