To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (via slyherin)
quotes
But what rings most dangerously prophetic about Salem is the ideology that suggests imagining the most helpless and vulnerable in our communities as the most powerful, in a kind of 1984-esque doublethink that provides a rationale for causing as much harm as one wishes to that group.
http://www.autostraddle.com/who-is-it-that-afflicts-you-312929/
This article is so good! And this quote sums up so much of what confounds me about our culture. Why do we do this? How do we keep getting away with it?
(via reindeerbee)
Kids love black holes the way they love T-Rex. And I think it’s because each of these entities can eat you. And anything that eats you, you give your highest respect.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries (via sonnywortzik)
#THIS IS ACTUALLY A THING#KIDS BELIEVE IN CONSUMPTION AS THE HIGHEST FORM OF CONTROL#THAT’S WHY THEY ARE OBSESSED WITH APEX PREDATORS
(via recursivities)
Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on
it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very
hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a
picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim: I loved your card.’
Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your
card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments
I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice
Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.
— Maurice Sendak
(via aimmyarrowshigh)
This is some advice I got from a priest mentor of mine years back. He said: ‘Here’s the rule, the airtight rule. Criticize somebody precisely in the measure that you are willing to help him or her deal with the problem you’re raising.’
The point is that if you are 100% willing to commit yourself to helping the person deal with the problem you’re raising, off you go. Critique ‘til the cows come home.
If you’re totally unwilling to take even one little step to help the person deal with the problem, then keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything.
Maybe a little bit of commitment? Maybe a little bit of critique.
That has never left my mind, that little piece of advice. When I feel the urge to criticize someone, ‘alright Barron, are you willing to commit yourself to helping him deal with his problems?’ If not, keep your mouth shut.
Father Robert Barron (via themushroomkiller)
It seems like the first rule of magic, or at least the first limitation mentioned, is usually ‘you can’t bring back the dead.’ And I know it makes sense from a writing standpoint, but I also wonder if it comes from somewhere else. If that’s just the first, most common human response to hearing that magic is possible. Maybe the first question was, ‘Are the dead still going to stay dead?’ for so long that people stopped needing to say it, that it just got answered right away. Yes, the world will still hurt. Chin up, you can make fire from your fingertips. Maybe you can hurt it back.
Ultimately, most things that are offensive are also lazy and unoriginal; because you can’t reach that point of view by looking at the world honestly…You reach that point of view by taking short cuts and by just sort of repeating what someone else told you.
Joseph Fink
Writer from Welcome To Night Vale discussing writing on Citizen Radio 865 (via podquotes)
Writer from Welcome To Night Vale discussing writing on Citizen Radio 865 (via podquotes)
Worry more about your conscience than your reputation. Because your conscience is what you are, your reputation is what others think of you. And what others think of you is their problem.
Charlie Chaplin (via happyhippiekpopperdreamsblr)