Quotes About Acceptance

Humanity is so adaptable [...] Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

Now maybe I wouldn't do it, but I was a child then, said Oryx more softly. Why are you so angry? I don't buy it, said Jimmy. Where was her rage, how far down was it buried, what did he have to do to dig it up? You don't buy what? Your whole fucking story. All this sweetness and acceptance and crap. If you don't want to buy that, Jimmy, said Oryx, looking at him tenderly, what is it that you would like to buy instead? (167)

My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out humiliating things that can neither be anticipated nor controlled. I sigh and make the best of it. I feel I'm older than they are, much older. I feel ancient.

All of this was understood, and if not condoned, at least pardoned.

You're dead, Cordelia.' No I'm not. 'Yes you are. You're dead. Lie down.

In the daylight we know what's gone is gone, but at night it's different. Nothing gets finished, not dying, not mourning;

Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don't really care about them all that much?

We're using up the Earth. It's almost gone. You can't live with such fears and keep on whistling. The waiting builds up in you like a tide. You start wanting it to be done with. You find yourself saying to the sky, Just do it. Do your worst. Get it over with.

I feel angry. I'm not proud of myself for this, or for any of it. But then, that's the point.

It's wrong to give so much time over to mourning, she tells herself. Mourning and brooding. There's nothing to be accomplished by it.

I can't believe in my own sadness, I can't take it seriously. I watch myself crying in the mirror, intrigued by the sight of tears.

Now I wanted to be acknowledged, but I feared it.

We can't always do what we want," said Zilla gently. "Even you." "And sometimes we have to do what we hate," said Vera. "Even you.

And I wondered what would become of me, and comforted myself that in a hundred years I would be dead and at peace, and in my grave; and I thought it might be less trouble altogether, to be in it a good deal sooner than that.

I didn't want to identify the body, or see it at all. If you don't see the body, it's easier to believe nobody's dead.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most.

Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody — a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.

Did I really wear bathing suits, at the beach? I did, without thought, among men, without caring that my legs, my arms, my thighs and back were on display, could be seen. Shameful, immodest.

Then I find I'm not ashamed after all. I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there.

It's like Janine, though, to take it upon herself, to decide the baby's flaws were due to her alone. But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.

It's fun to be different, but not too different!

The future is in your hands, she resumed. She held her own hands out to us, the ancient gesture that was both an offering and an invitation, to come forward, into an embrace, an acceptance. In your hands, she said, looking down at her own hands as if they had given her the idea. But there was nothing in them. They were empty. It was our hands that were supposed to be full, full of the future; which could be held but not seen.

But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most. I wish she were here, so I could tell her I finally know this.