185 Quotes by Lindy West

If you are one of those people who believes that racism is a thing of the past, never existed at all, or is defined simply as one person being mean to another person, you are claiming that white people genuinely earn – through ability alone, because anything else would be a systemic advantage – twenty times as much as black people.

Honestly, there is something seductive about being the kind of person who can just take it. Challenging myself to absorb more and more hate is a masochistic form of vanity.

There is no value in willfully ignoring hatred, and the lie that neutrality in the face of oppression is not a political stance is part of how we got here.

Each time something like this happens, take a breath and ask yourself, honestly: Am I dead? Did I die? Is the world different? Has my soul splintered into a thousand shards and scattered to the winds? I think you’ll find, in nearly every case, that you are fine.

Mike made me feel lonely, and being alone with another person is much worse than being alone all by yourself.

The myth of the “liberal elite” strategically frames liberal values – environmentalism, racial and gender equality, gay and trans liberation, immigrants’ rights, the social safety net-as inherently frivolous, dishonest, a joke. By extension, the people who would benefit from the actualization of those values are “fake” Americans- the nation’s most vulnerable groups being called decadent effetes.

Those kids grew up to be the great, white, complacent center – the nonvoters, the apolitical, the ones who just stay out of it, as though inaction isn’t a political stance.

Loving yourself is not antithetical to health, it is intrinsic to health. You can’t take good care of a thing you hate.

Americans are addicted to plausible deniability.