Quotes About Validation

It seems like we've gotten to the point where our experiences, our memories--our entire lives, actually--aren't real unless we post about them online. I wonder if we might miss the days of being unreasonable.

I miss the Stella girls telling me what I am. That I'm sweet and placid and accommodating and loyal and nonthreatening and good to have around. And Mia. I want her to say, "Frankie, you're silly, you're lazy, you're talented, you're passionate, you're restrained, you're blossoming, you're contrary." I want to be an adjective again. But I'm a noun. A nothing. A nobody. A no one.

You're good enough, Jacob.

If Froi understood anything, it was that in this world one's worth came from others.

My friends always told me they wanted to rescue me from Siobhan, and I relished being saved because it meant that people stopped tapping me on the shoulder to point out what I was doing wrong.

She thinks she knows who I am because she thinks who I am is who she tells me I am.

And he knew that, but all his life he'd been treated like crap to the point that he believed he was crap. He'd never done anything good and nobody had ever said anything positive about him.

Self-hatred is the best vehicle for making people do as they're told because they are hungry to get approval.

He gazed at me. "You've grown up honey." It felt good to hear it. I thought maybe he was right. Then it occurred to me that if I really had grown up I wouldn't want to be told.

W]hen I told my dad why I was calling, he just said, 'Honey, you're so beautiful it doesn't matter what you wear.' I wondered how many dads in America were, at that very moment, giving their daughters the same useless advice mine was giving me.

Even worse than not being noticed, he decided, was being noticed and found wanting.

We Are Lovable Even if the most important person in your world rejects you, you are still real, and you are still okay.

We are all persons courtesy of someone else, and since we need others to perceive us in order to experience ourselves, it is very hard to like yourself when those nearest you seem to doubt your worth. And when those around you don't see you as you want to see yourself, it is only too easy to lose the way and start auditioning instead for them.

Some people know that they are so adorable looking, all they have to do is smile and dress up and they get plenty from that. Then there are some of us who, early on, see that that doesn't work. So we joke about it.

Don't pretend to ask for advice when you're looking for vindication.

A 'passing' test doesn't mean 'no problem.' It means no problem *observed*. This time. With these inputs. So far. On my machine.

To me, legacy code is simply code without tests.

It was one thing to be called pretty; it was a true compliment to be called smart.

All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself.

He insists on a version of you that is funnier, stranger, more eccentric and profound than you suspect yourself to be--capable of doing more good and more harm in the world than you've ever imagined--it is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through your essence, weighs your true qualities . . . and appreciates you more fully than anyone else ever has.

When you look outside yourself for affirmation, you give extraordinary power to the affirmer. When people have extraordinary power, they tend to abuse it.

For certain people, you gotta remind them that you have a way better record collection than they do. And this tape I'm giving you now will show and prove it. (Not that it's a competition…but it always is.)

His eldest daughter, Alice, once described her father as wanting to be the "bride at every wedding, and the corpse at every funeral."1

deemed correct, the student was