Imaan > Imaan's Quotes

“If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”
― bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”
― bell hooks, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work

“I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.”
― bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies

“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.”
― bell hooks

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.”
― Anais Nin

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin

“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”
― Anais Nin

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
― Anais Nin

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”
― Anais Nin

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“To me, Fearless is not the absense of fear. It's not being completely unafraid. To me, Fearless is having fears. Fearless is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, Fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death.”
― Taylor Swift

“Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together. I hope you use yours for good, because the only words you'll regret more than the ones left unsaid are the ones you use to intentionally hurt someone.”
― Taylor Swift

“We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.”
― Lana Del Rey

“I once had a dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events some of those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken.
But I didn't really mind, because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.”
― Lana Del Rey

“I've got a war in my mind”
― Lana Del Rey, Lana Del Rey - Born to Die Paradise Edition | Piano Vocal Guitar Sheet Music & Songbook for Singers and Musicians | 23 Iconic Pop Ballads Transcribed for Piano Players and Vocalists |Artist Collection

“I'm tired of feeling like I'm fucking crazy.
I'm tired of driving till I see stars in my eyes.”
― Lana Del Rey

“A novel worth reading is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.”
― Susan Sontag

“I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all. I like watching people, but I don’t like talking to them, dealing with them, pleasing them, or offending them. I am tired.”
― Susan Sontag, I, etcetera

“Often something looks, or is felt to look, "better" in a photograph. Indeed, it is one of the functions of photography to improve the normal appearance of things. (Hence, one is always disappointed by a photograph that is not flattering.)”
― Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

“Why am I compelled to write?... Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger... To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit... Finally I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.”
― Gloria Anzaldúa

“Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.”
― Gloria Anzaldua

“Though we tremble before uncertain futures
may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength
may we dance in the face of our fears.
”
― Gloria Anzaldúa

“A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

“Wild tongues can't be tamed, they can only be cut out.”
― Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

“I am mad - but I choose this madness.”
― Gloria Anzaldua

“I change myself, I change the world.”
― Gloria Anzaldua

“Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
― Gloria Anzaldua

“Your silence will not protect you.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches