ALL of this. Encourage people to try new words, to mess them up, to experiment with vocabulary, to learn complicated adjectives and verbs and nouns, because words are fun.
Also, don’t be a jerk.
Reading feels like something I was born loving.
I’ve never been able to understand race or prejudice, really. I find it very difficult. It’s like going to a library and saying to the librarian, I’m sorry, I only read books with red covers.
Certainly there are times in all of our lives when bad things happen, or things don’t turn out as we had hoped. But that’s when we must make a decision that we’re going to be happy in spite of our circumstances.
Shelves without books were lonely and just plain wrong.
It’s the little things that make up your life. The bigger events just connect them.
Friday was an important day for Harry and Ron. They finally managed to find their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast without getting lost once.
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Ch. 8, p. 100
#Can we just pause for a moment and appreciate how sweet this is? #I mean, it’s something that probably many of us can relate to. #And in the context of the story, with all the great things Harry and Ron are going to do, it’s just so cute that getting down to breakfast was a big accomplishment way back when.
(via hermionesbookshelf)
Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.
(Source: trulyquotable)
[TW: rape] For readers interested in learning more about how not to be labeled as registered sex offenders, a good first step is not to rape unconscious women, no matter how good your grades are. Regardless of the strength of your GPA (weighted or unweighted), if you commit rape, there is a possibility you may someday be convicted of a sex crime. This is because of your decision to commit a sex crime instead of going for a walk, or reading a book by Cormac McCarthy. Your ability to perform calculus or play football is generally not taken into consideration in a court of law. Should you prefer to be known as ‘Good student and excellent football player Trent Mays’ rather than ‘Convicted sex offender Trent Mays,’ try stressing the studying and tackling and giving the sex crimes a miss altogether…
Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richardson are not the “stars” of the Steubenville rape trial. They aren’t the only characters in a drama playing out in eastern Ohio. And yet a CNN viewer learning about the Steubenville rape verdict is presented with dynamic, sympathetic, complicated male figures, and a nonentity of an anonymous victim, the ‘lasting effects’ of whose graphic, public sexual assault are ignored. Small wonder, then, that anyone would find themselves on the side of these men—these poor young men, who were very good at taking tests and playing sports when they were not raping their classmates.
(Source: cognitivedissonance)
A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It’s also an influence in the way you see everything.
When I was five years old my mother always told me to bitch slap people who made up fake quotes about me
I was raped by four men in one evening. I got drunk and tried to say no. What did my predators do? They told me to drink more. They shoved a bottle in my face and told me to keep drinking. Drink till I was drunk enough to fuck them. I blacked out. They urinated on me. They assaulted me. They shoved foreign objects in my body, anally and vaginally. They took videos. I was just 16 years old. The video was sent around my entire school, and I was bullied every single day of my senior year of high school. I lost all of my friends. I was physically and verbally abused by peers and people I once called friends. Someone tried to set me on fire in the hallway during passing period. Nobody sympathized with me. Nobody cared about the fact that because of these events, I was trying to kill myself every single day. I was cutting myself, making myself puke, showering upwards of fifteen times a day because I felt filthy. I was scratching and peeling the skin off of my body because I was dirty. I looked at myself like I deserved what I got. The world saw me as dirty, so I began to see myself that way, too. My rapists were praised by my peers for their deed. I never had a voice. When I first learned about the Steubenville incident going to trial, I was overjoyed. Because Jane Doe’s story was my story, and if anyone deserved justice, it was her. She would get the justice I never got. She would change the tide of the rape culture movement. Despite the horrific events that occurred, I knew that the justice served would help ease her pain. But she didn’t get justice, and now she has to witness this news coverage, favoring and sympathizing with her attackers. Pain is not an accurate word to describe what she is feeling right now. Pain is the simplest term you could use. As a rape victim and an aspiring journalist, I am disgusted with the way this case was reported on. Jane Doe’s rapists deserve their suffering in prison. They deserve more. They do not deserve to be sympathized with. They made their stupid decision, and they deserve whatever consequences come their way. If you don’t want to be labeled as a rapist, don’t fucking rape.
I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
