Respect is and is not about authority

"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."

Celeste Porter?

Beauty was not simply something to behold

"Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.” —Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

And I Am Quite Free

"I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free." Georgia O'Keefe

New Yorks

"E.B. White said there were three New Yorks: the city of those who were born here, the city of those who commute in daily, and the city of those who come here 'in quest of something.' To this list, we may now add a fourth: The New York of those who stayed."

Do the thing or dont do it. Either is fine.

"Honestly, there is a lot to be said for tooling about all day, looking up recipes and not making them, not bothering to paint the living room and failing to write a novel. In the middle of the messy, non-event called your mid-afternoon, you might get something—a thought to jot down, a good paragraph, a piece of gossip to text a pal. Boredom is a productive state so long as you don't let it go sour on you. Try not to confuse the urge to get something done with the idea that you are useless. Try not to confuse the urge to contact someone with the thought that you are unloved. Do the thing or don't do it. Either is fine." —Ann Enright

Close and Open Like a Hinge

I wanted
The past to go away, I wanted
To leave it, like another country; I wanted
My life to close, and open
Like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
Where it falls
Down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
To hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
Whoever I was, I was

Alive
For a little while.

…mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
Or mean,
For a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
Swim through the fires to stay in
This world.”

― Mary Oliver

Being Passive

"“The purgatory of passivity is resentment. It will form the way a puddle does, drop by drop. Then, as the drops accumulate, the puddle of resentment becomes a stream.”
-Barbara Pachter