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Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman QUOTES

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman QUOTES

81 " I had been erroneously led to believe that “veterinarian” was the grown-up term for “professional animal-petter. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

82 " It’s hard to feel hurt or frightened when you’re flooded with pity. It’s hard to be cold or cruel when you remember it’s hard to be a person. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

83 " It’s so pathetic, the tough-guy posturing, but so sinister, because, to put it plainly, that’s how black men die. Insecure, pee-pants white men assume that any disagreement is a life-threatening situation. Dave assumed Aham was dangerous, and was prepared to shoot him with a gun, even though Dave was the only one in the equation who’d issued a threat of any kind. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

84 " One time, I noticed that the little waxy strips you peel off the maxi pad adhesive were printed, over and over, with a slogan: 'Kotex Understands.' In the worst moments, when my period felt like a death - the death of innocence, the death of safety, the harbinger of a world where I was too fat, too weird, too childish, too ungainly - I'd sit hunched over on the toilet and stare at that slogan, and I'd cry. Kotex understands. Somebody, somewhere, understands. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

85 " You have to swallow, every day, that you are a secondary being whose worth is measured by an arbitrary, impossible standard, administered "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

86 " Passively attempting to earn my humanity by being smart, nice, friendly, and good at my job had gotten me nowhere; my private confrontation with Dan had gotten me nowhere; literally telling him ‘this harms me’ had gotten me nowhere; taking a quick, vague swipe at him on the blog had gotten me nowhere. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

87 " Art isn’t indiscriminate shit-flinging. It’s pure communication, crafted with intention and care. Every comedian on every stage is saying what he’s saying on purpose. So shouldn’t we be welcome to examine that purpose, contextualize it within our culture at large, and critique what we find? The "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

88 " I didn't know it at the time, but the idea of 'coming out' as fat comes up a lot in fat-acceptance circles. I always thought that if I just never, ever acknowledged it - never wore a bathing suit, never objected to a fat joke on TV, stuck to 'flattering clothes, never said the word 'fat' out loud - then maybe people wouldn't notice. Maybe I could pass as thin, or at least obedient. But, I was slowly learning, you can't advocate for yourself if you won't admit what you are. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

89 " Fat people are not here as a foil to boost your own self-esteem. Fat people are not your inspiration poem. Fat people can be competent, beautiful, talented, and proud without your approval. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

90 " Puberty” was a fancy word for your genitals stabbing you in the back. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

91 " Yet it seems like the more abuse I get, the more abuse I court - baring myself more extravagantly, processing opinions that I know will draw an onslaught - because, after all, if I've already adjusted my body temperature, why not face the blizzard so that other women don't have to freeze?
Paradoxical undressing, I guess. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

92 " I spent a lot of time alone as a kid. I’ve never been an easy hugger. The social conventions that keep human beings separate and discrete—boundaries, etiquette, privacy, personal space—have always been a great well of safety to me. I am a rule follower. I like choosing whom I let in close. The emotional state of emergency following a death necessarily breaks those conventions down, and, unfortunately, I am bad at being human without them. I "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

93 " It’s so pathetic, the tough-guy posturing, but so sinister, because, to put it plainly, that’s how black men die. Insecure, pee-pants white men assume that any disagreement is a life-threatening situation. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

94 " You can't fix a problem by targeting its victims. Even if you hate fat people with all your heart, if you actually want to get us out of 'your' armrest space, defending out humanity is the only pragmatic solution. Because no matter how magnificently you resent them, you cannot turn a fat person into a thin person in time for the final boarding call (nor a full bladder into an empty one, nor a crying baby into a baked potato). The only answer is to decide we're worth helping. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

95 " He was, and then he wasn't. One moment his body was the locus of his personhood, the next moment our memories had to pick up the slack. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

96 " Choose to be kind. That notion of choice -- of choosing what kind of person you want to be -- is more important now than ever. If our country isn't going to take care of everyone, we must take of the people left behind. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

97 " When I was twenty-two, and all I wanted was to blend in, that rejection was crushing and hopeless and lonely. Years later, when I was finally ready to stand out, the realization that the mainstream didn't want me was freeing and galvanizing. It gave me something to fight for. It taught me that women are an army. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

98 " Honestly, there is something seductive about being the kind of person who can just take it. Challenging myself to absorb more and more hate is a masochistic form of vanity. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

99 " (In a certain light, feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you.) "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

100 " The suffering in Boston, as horrifying as it is, is largely abstract to a nation that has, for the most part, never experienced such a thing. On the other hand, in every room Oswalt performs comedy in, there will be a rape survivor. Statistically speaking, there will be many. There will be even more if he is performing at a university. If exceptional violence illuminates our human capacity for empathy, then structural violence shows the darkness of indifference. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman