Collection of Pennies

Writing, quotes, feminism, and a bit of personal junk

[okay]

I told myself that I won’t be like everyone else. I told myself that I’m gonna wait for the right man that will stay in my life as long as we are alive. Told myself, I will cherish the meaning of love the way it should be cherished. And I told myself that I won’t settle for a love that is mediocre. 

[thehikingastronomer]

To all the writers out there

Don’t aspire to be the next JK Rowling. Don’t aspire to write the next Hunger Games.

Don’t aspire to be the next anything.

Aspire to be the first something.

[wordsnquotes]

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound.

Steve Martin, The Pleasure of My Company (via wordsnquotes)

[iapprovethispost]

The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.

Vladimir Nabokov (via elucipher)

[pennycollction]

And sometimes I can feel the weight of every molecule between us, so heavy on my skin, skin that vibrates every second, begging to be touched

pennycollection

[kenyatta]

Last year, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero. In 2012 the figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period. The explanation for this gap is simple. In Britain, guns are rare. Only specialist firearms officers carry them; and criminals rarely have access to them. The last time a British police officer was killed by a firearm on duty was in 2012, in a brutal case in Manchester. The annual number of murders by shooting is typically less than 50. Police shootings are enormously controversial. The shooting of Mark Duggan, a known gangster, which in 2011 started riots across London, led to a fiercely debated inquest. Last month, a police officer was charged with murder over a shooting in 2005. The reputation of the Metropolitan Police’s armed officers is still barely recovering from the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian, in the wake of the 7/7 terrorist bombings in London. In America, by contrast, it is hardly surprising that cops resort to their weapons more frequently. In 2013, 30 cops were shot and killed—just a fraction of the 9,000 or so murders using guns that happen each year. Add to that a hyper-militarised police culture and a deep history of racial strife and you have the reason why so many civilians are shot by police officers. Unless America can either reduce its colossal gun ownership rates or fix its deep social problems, shootings of civilians by police—justified or not—seem sure to continue.

Armed police: Trigger happy | The Economist (via kenyatta)

[mikleos-deactivated20160315]

making HONEST ANTAGONISTS who believe they’re in the right and firmly believe in what they’re doing is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING than making them “crazy” because of some outside influence. make villains who believe they are the protagonists

[pennycollction]

More Dreams

So I was having a dream last night that we were throwing this huge party with our neighbors and a lot of random stuff happened but that's not the point.  I was in my PJs because apparently no one had informed me of this party.  So people started showing up and I was like......uhhhmm ok.

So I went to get dressed.  Then I woke up (for reals) turned to my husband, and told him "well you're the life of the party aren't you?" because I thought he was in there sleeping while the party was going on outside.  And then I went back to sleep.

[book--quotes]

Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

[pennycollction]

My fucking neighbors are driving around drunk on a motorcycle. I say drunk but they started drinking at like 3 and now it’s midnight. Like are you fucking serious?

Ok, I have drank with them. We are friends. They have 3 kids, I have 3 kids. Their girls and my older girls are close in age so they hang out a lot. I am not a pillar of society or morality or anything….but I seriously question their decisions at times. Like I have ZERO patience for drunk driving. Maybe they stopped drinking early (HA) but from what I know of them…No they didn’t. (They’re alcoholics)

What makes it better…they don’t even own a car. Tom (not real names here) rolled it driving drunk…almost killed his (no longer) friend. Their other friend Brad brought the bike up. (Its not his either though)

Why is this funny? Well Brad came up last year and they decided they were going to play wife swap. Tom screwed Brad ‘s wife but Tasha (Tom’s wife) freaked the fuck out and couldn’t go through with it. The other day when Brad showed up unexpectedly was the first time since that they’d seen him. Brad is divorced now and Tasha told me that she met Brad and Tom at the same time and Brad was “the road not traveled” (ie she could have gone either way) and sometimes she wonders if she would have been better off…

Well she really knows how to pick em I guess. Sometimes I S2G their life is a telanovella. Like I set out here to complain about drunk driving and how Tom should know better than most….and look where I ended up.

[shesanargonaut]

Sometimes, I wake up at four in the morning and taste smoke in the back of my throat. I swear to god, you’re still burning somewhere inside me.

Solange (via perfect)

[pennycollction]

We need to remember that while misogyny may be perpetuated mostly by men, it is enabled by both men and women in a society who embrace gender inequality -- or simply let it go unnoticed

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

[writerswritecompany]

TBR

[pennycollction]

Even in movies and TV shows, we see tough women turning to men and saying, "Quit acting like a girl." Cue audience chuckle at the reversal. But all that does is prove we've brainwashed women to be derogatory toward themselves.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

[pennycollction]

Even more disturbing is why so much violence in America is directed at women. The answer to this question, at least in part, is that it's a result of a lifetime of cultural influences"

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

[pennycollction]

As with many institutions and universal ideas in this nation in recent years it seems that even something as right and as basic as feeding children food that is good for them has become politicized. Right now we all need to pause, step back and look at the bigger picture. The costs associated with not investing in real food are too great, and we need to acknowledge honestly the far-reaching consequences that the current program has had in every area of American life.

Alice Waters - Time Magazine

[pennycollction]

Photoshopping is required because no woman (not even a model) can match the fantasy woman our culture promotes on the covers of almost every women's magazine.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar