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“You’re a product of our languageâ€�, Brandy says, “and how our laws are and how we believe our God wants us. Every bitty molecule about you has already been thought out by some million people before youâ€� she says. “Anything you can do is boring and old and perfectly okay. You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it. You can’t imagine any way to escape. There’s no way you can get out […] And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that’s a trap, too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trapâ€�.

The books on plastic surgery, the pamphlets and brochures all promised to help me live a more normal, happy life; but less and less, this looked like what I'd want. What I wanted looked more and more like what I'd always been trained to want. What everybody wants.

Give me attention.

Flash.

Give me beauty.

Flash.

Give me peace and happiness, a loving relationship, and a perfect home.

Flash.

Brandy says, "The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger."

She says, "Don't do what you want." She says, "Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want."

It's the opposite of following your bliss.

Brandy tells me, "Do the things that scare you the mostâ€�.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“When you read Marx (or Jesus) this way, you come to see that real wealth is not material wealth and real poverty is not just the lack of food, shelter, and clothing. Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.”
― Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century

“As Jimmy Boggs used to remind us, revolutions are made out of love for people and for place. He often talked about loving America enough to change it. 'I love this country,' he used to say, 'not only because my ancestors' blood is in the soil but because of what I believe it can become.' Love isn't just something you feel. It's something you do everyday when you go out and pick the paper and bottles scattered the night before on the corner, when you stop and talk to a neighbor, when you argue passionately for what you believe in with whoever will listen, when you call a friend to see how they're doing, when you write a letter to the newspaper, when you give a speech and give 'em hell, when you never stop believing that we can all be more than what we are. In other words, Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after.”
― Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying