inspiration journal quotes

Quotes, song lyrics, etc. scavenged from the Internet and books that I've read. Additional place to talk about literature the way that I did in my English classes in college (and how I wish my HS students will, at least sometimes, recreate).

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

Reading List 2026

(Linked titles go to the book review I posted. Searching author's name/book title will get any quotes or other posts I might have made.)

Currently Reading:

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney (03.21)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (02.12)

Troy by Adele Geras (09.08.25)

The Best American Short Stories 2024 edited by Lauren Groff (06.16.25)

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan (06.10.24)

Finished:

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansbury (12.09.25 - 01.08.26)

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino (01.06 - 01.23)

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder (01.25 - 01.31)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (02.02 - 02.11)

Where Wolves Don’t Die Anton Treuer (02.11 - 02.21)

The Secret Lives of Colors* by Kassia St. Clair (01.01 - 03.21)

Lost Lambs* by Madeline Cash (03.02 - 03.21)

Past Lists: 2024, 2025

*Any books that I would vehemently not recommend will be marked using an astrick.

[sxpositive]

book asks:

book you’ve reread the most times?

top 5 books of all time?

what is your favourite genre?

what sections of a bookstore do you browse?

where do you buy books?

what books have you read in the last month?

is there a series/book that got you into reading?

what is the first book you remember reading yourself?

when do you tend to read most?

do you have a guilty fav?

what non-fiction books do you like if any?

did you enjoy any compulsory high school readings?

do you have a goodreads?

do you ever mark/dog ear books you own?

recommend and review a book.

how many books have you read this year?

top 5 children’s books?

do you like historical books? which time period?

most disliked popular books?

what are things you look for in a book?

[jesncin]

Has anyone else encountered this really white-woman-wrote-this feeling trope where a heroine character is given self-care-coded sage advice that basically tells her that she doesn't have to save the world?

I get where this sentiment is coming from since marginalized people often feel so solely responsible for fixing everything to the point of carrying the burden of saving the world on their own shoulders, but! The part where it feels weirdly white feminism-y to me is that the heroine in these stories is often (through worldbuilding reasons) the only person who can physically save the world.

So getting the whole "hey girl, remember to take care of yourself. It's not just about what you give to other people, check in on your own personal happiness too." rings empty here. Especially when these stories take place in a fantasy war setting where taking a self care vacation from the revolution towards liberation isn't an option.

I can't fully put my finger on the exact reason why, but stories like this feel so representative of how white women are marginalized. They get tired of fighting and then comfortably retreat into the confines of whiteness while women of color don't get days off.

These stories often have a theme of "You don't have to save the world, heroine." Even though she's the only one who has the power to do it. And then she just ends the story saving the world anyway because she'd look like a monster for not doing that in the first place. I think in some ways it's because the narrative in these stories lessens the actual weight and cost of war so that a heroine taking a break doesn't look deeply irresponsible.

They're trying to deconstruct how "selfishness" is demonized and self-sacrifice-for-the-collective is put on a pedestal as a moral virtue, but doesn't that all fall apart when your heroine is the only one who can enact real change? It's like telling Avatar Aang he doesn't have to save the world because to do so would be too self-sacrificing.

[averagecygnet-blog]

i just read the metamorphosis and it was fucking devastating. there are so many readings you could take, ive heard people say kafka intended it to be about depression which is something that he struggled with and i heavily fw the trans reading, but personally i primarily read it as being about disability. gregor wakes up one day physically unable to work and his family reacts with not only shock but disgust and horror. it's not even that THEY now have to work where they didn't before; we see at the end of the story that working doesn't really bother them. it's about his presence in their house. now that he's disabled and can't work, they dehumanize him completely, even denying that it's him at all. they act like having to take care of him is this horrible act of sacrifice they're performing - and they don't even actually take care of him, they leave him alone all day no matter how badly he wants company, they don't clean his room and instead let him live in filth (in fact they put their junk in there making it more of a mess), they throw things at him injuring him further, and they don't feed him properly to the point where he dies of malnutrition.

to me the saddest part was when grete said (not verbatim) "if it were truly gregor then he would've known it was impossible for us to live with a thing like that, and left already." bc fuck man. yeah of course gregor just gave up and died after that. how could he go on. his sister used to love him more than anyone else. is it the worst and most selfish thing in the world to want to be cared for by your own family.

[the-entire-chinese-population]

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

Didn’t Jude dream too? Of Winnie’s forgiveness, her trust, the two of them back the way they were, back to girlhood, as if returning was easy, as if it was a choice.

From Lovers XXX by Allie Rowbottom

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[thewordsmith3]

OH MY GOSH this is awesome

@aromantic-official I think you might like this

@aromanticofficial You too!

[aromanticofficial]

official aromantic interactive poem

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

Oh

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe and not love them the way they love themselves.

From Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

Of course I’d known, in some rough practical sense, that my body would have to split open for a child to leave it, but I hadn’t been remotely prepared for the bald terror of it; hadn’t known the delivery room would smell like iron from all the blood loss, not to mention literal human excrement. I felt like one of those teenage boys shipped off to Normandy for D-Day.

From Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

I’m being watched, I remind myself, on good days and bad days, again and again. Like a mantra: someone, somewhere, has to be watching me right now. They have to be. There’s no other option I can accept. And whoever’s watching me? I want them to see how helpless I am. How beautiful I can be, even in the ugliest-possible situation. It’s always the helpless and beautiful ones who are kidnapped, sure—but it’s also the helpless and beautiful ones who are saved.

From Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

People see me as a bridge. I’m not as alive as I used to be, but I’m not yet dead. I’m sort of…in-between.

Morrie Schwartz, Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

When it rains in Wellsie, you can see the ghosts. That’s what we call these remnants of a thing long past, laid to rest in the ground with all other dead things. Magic was here once. And it left its toenail clippings for you to find.

From Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear by Robin Wasley

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

A voice in my head, echoing softly: America hates angry women. The Lord hates angry women. You hate angry women. Do not be an angry woman. Except I am angry. I am very, very angry. 

From Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

A trade must take place for this life to enter the world. As my body slowly halved open like a peach, I realized it was me who was losing my life; me who would vanish from the world to make room for this new child. I will never be Natalie again. I will only ever be Mama. For one single moment, I wished the child gone. Not just out of me, but out of this world. Erased. Then the room was filled with her bellowing, and the fear fell away, and the love—or something like it—came tunneling back through.

From Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words. Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name.

From The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

Holding him like that moved me in a way I cannot describe, except to say I felt the seeds of death inside his shriveling frame, and as I laid him in his chair, adjusting his head on the pillows, I had the coldest realization that our time was running out.

From Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

[myinspirationjournalquotes]

Hassan and I stand ankle-deep in untamed grass, I am tugging on the line, the spool spinning in Hasssan’s calloused hands, our eyes turned up to the kite in the sky. Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything—that’s how it is between people who are each other’s first memories, people who have fed from the same breast. 

From The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini