Home > Work > Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution
1 " Until women are allowed to make mediocre works of art while still succeeding in the way that many white men get to do this every single day, we will not have the power to take our creative freedoms back. We will be limited by impossible expectations reserved for the few. As long as we are put and put ourselves on a patriarchal pedestal, too high to succeed and doomed to fail, then surely we will be set up to do exactly that, every time. "
― Amber Tamblyn , Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution
2 " People marched not just because of what Donald Trump did, but because of what all the Donald Trumps have always done. Women marched not just because a woman had lost, but because we too were all done with losing. "
3 " We are taught so little about the health and safety of our physical bodies and also so little about how to protect them. Women have been kept in the dark of our own light, having to go to extraordinary lengths to educate others about what we need, from our basic rights to affordable health care, to our own sexual pleasures, to our emotional well-being. The burden is on women to be self-taught in a world where most men are already self-made—the latter being defined by expectations, the former by limitations. "
4 " A crisis of character is nothing new for the United States of America and its long history of abuses of power. When I look at our country today, I see a nation deep in the terror of its own retooling, stuck between a past it can’t outrun and the trajectory of a future it must outgrow. We are a nation that still cannot wrap its head around the overwhelming inequality among genders and races in our society and institutional systems. We are a nation that cannot agree on the definition of misogyny, let alone put a finger on its pervasiveness or manifestation. But there seem to be benchmark eras in our history that have brought great and radical change to fruition—times when we weren’t just living through difficulties, but actively confronting our values and agitating for revolutionary change. I believe we are in one of those eras right now. "
5 " Putting our minds to something has never been the problem. The problem has been: Who decides whose mind is worthy? "
6 " I could get rejected for jobs in acting, directing, or writing for the rest of my life, but nothing would ever take away what the experience of directing my first feature film had taught me: that I know myself better than I think I do and that I know my worth better than others think they do. "
7 " This world demands nothing short of perfection from women who aim high, and our need to see perfection in women has, until recently, far outweighed our need for their participation. "