random-bookquotes

[random-bookquotes]

Marketing is a reflection of society, so it often upholds and reinforces stereotypes and norms, no matter how dangerous or seemingly outdated they may be. And while society seems to have evolved a bit toward gender equality, a lot of promotions still parrot reductive typecasts.

Ashlee Piper, No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity

[random-bookquotes]

Too much scheming can spell the end of a schemer. All too often, a schemer forgets that he, too, may fall victim to the schemes of another.

Dojyomaru, How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, Volume 2

[random-bookquotes]

“I’m an insect in the face of a lot of things. Just like you are probably an insect in the face of gods.”

V.A. Lewis, Amber the Cursed Berserker Book 2

[random-bookquotes]

If TB became a problem in the rich world, attention and resources would rain down upon the illness until it ceased to be a problem for the rich, powerful, and able-bodied.

John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

[random-bookquotes]

Language is a lot more than words and sentences. It’s easy to forget the ease with which we communicate silently and subtly with other humans—until you’re stuck in the jungle with no shared vocabulary. A sly wink can be enough to transform the meaning of a sentence by 180°: “Sure, we’ll finish work this afternoon instead of going to the pub.”

Arik Kershenbaum, Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication

[random-bookquotes]

He’s a korgorusha. They have a mind of their own, like cats. When they love you, they protect your house and property and bring you presents they steal from the neighbors. When they’re mad at you, they’ll claw your pillows and break your dishes.

Ilona Andrews, Sanctuary (Roman’s Chronicles, #1)

[random-bookquotes]

Treating disease—whether through herbs or magic or drugs—is unnatural. No other animals do it, at least not with anything approaching our sophistication. Hospitals are unnatural, as are novels and saxophones. None of us actually wants to live in a natural world. And yet we tell ourselves that some—and only some—lives end naturally (which really means “acceptably” or “well”). We construct ideas about what constitutes a good time and manner of death.

John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

[random-bookquotes]

But something I’ve learned: hearts don’t get sort of broken. That’s just something you say to hide the extent of your fragility.

Jeff Zentner, Sunrise Nights

[random-bookquotes]

Because brand-driven advertising is old hat, user-generated content (UGC), or influencer marketing, is seen as more appealing and genuine. Marketers know that repeated exposure to a product from different places and people will drive you to buy the item, even if you weren’t all that interested to begin with. And what better place to subject folks to said repeated exposure than the social media channels each of us wastes nearly two and a half hours on each day?

Ashlee Piper, No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity

[random-bookquotes]

Libraries, bookstores, and most entertainment media organize their offerings by audience. We don’t have to protect children from stories with LGBTQ+ characters. The books won’t make them gay, any more than reading mysteries will make them murderers. We read for information and entertainment, and the process of personal change takes longer than reading a single book.

James LaRue, On Censorship

[random-bookquotes]

Letter-writing in the eighteenth century was an art form. Manuals abounded on how to write the perfect letter. One had to address one’s correspondent according to the ranks, sexes and ages of both writer and recipient. There were coded phrases, formulae, unwritten rules that needed to be known. The structure of the perfect letter required careful thought.

Susannah Gibson, The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement

[random-bookquotes]

It was Cyndi Lauper who sang, back in 1983, that girls just want to have fun. We want other things as well, of course: to be loved; to be respected; to be safe from violence and fear; to be able to make our own decisions about our own bodies. But sure, fun is on the list.

Jennifer Finney Boylan, Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us

[random-bookquotes]

They’d both studied the conflict before even leaving. It was important, when starting a war, to know what would make one win it.

Álex Gilbert, Casus Belle (The Calamitous Bob, #9)

[random-bookquotes]

“Non-descript alleyways are only non-descript until something interesting happens in them. Now it’s, you know, descript. A descript alleyway.”

Silver Linings, Die. Respawn. Repeat. 2: A LitRPG Adventure

[random-bookquotes]

We are, each of us, a one-woman show. But our lives are not movie montages. It’s not a perfect story arc. It’s messy. You are scared to do something, and you do it, and you realize you don’t really want to do it after all. But you learn why. And if you choose, you change it. Or you stop doing it, because you can.

Brooke Shields, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old

[random-bookquotes]

But I wonder if we also ignore illness because of our bias toward agency and control. We would like to imagine that we captain the ships of our lives, that human history is largely the story of human choice. Perhaps this is why rumors have swirled for millennia that Alexander the Great died of poisoning even though he almost certainly died of typhoid or malaria. We simply don’t want a world where even the most powerful emperor can be felled by mere infection.

John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

[random-bookquotes]

The idea of becoming sick in order to look healthy or beautiful speaks to how profoundly consumptive beauty ideals still shape the world we share.

John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection