Lindy Quotes

Let Your Color Out! ~ Lindy Lewis

I sometimes think of people's personalities as the negative space around their insecurities. ~ Lindy West

If Google had existed when I was eleven, my search history would have looked something like this:

how much comes out
how many cups come out
how to stop period
cancel your period
people with no period
spells to delay period
blood magic
witchcraft
witches
the witches
roald dahl
new roald dahl books
free roald dahl books for kids ~ Lindy West

I have an amazing 1930s dress I picked up in Toronto at Cabaret on Queen West. It's a red knee-length tea dress, and it's absolutely beautiful. It makes me happy every time I put it on. ~ Lindy Booth

I try not to. I mean, you shouldn't miss people who don't miss you, right? ~ Alex Flinn

By 2019, the far Right's unflagging message...has come to full fruition, its ultimate purpose revealed: to justify the stigmatization of care itself. It's not just caring about the environment that's effeminate and therefore despicable, it's caring about anything. It's care. ~ Lindy West

I fervently believe that people shouldn't stay in bad relationships just because of some artificial rom-com notion of true love being "forever." In fact, I think that the pressure of conforming to that framework ruins-literally RUINS-a lot of people's lives. ~ Lindy West

But it's hard to be hip over thirty when everyone else is nineteen, when the last dance we learned was the Lindy, and the last we heard, girls who looked like Barbara Streisand were trying to do something about it. ~ Judith Viorst

We're not done talking about this."
"Yes, we are, because in case you didn't notice, you just walked out, hence the ending of the conversation!"
He comes back to say, "It will be resumed at a later date."
"I'm calling in sick that day. ~ Lindy Zart

Vashon is an island, accessible by ferry from Seattle, mainly populated by NIMBY-ish hippies, NIMBY-ish yuppies, boutique farmers, and wizards riding recumbent bicycles. A full quarter of the children in Vashon schools are unvaccinated. ~ Lindy West

I can text in complete sentences. Oh, yeah, it's a skill." He smiled, proud of his accomplishments. "And, thanks to my mom being a competitive dancer as a teen, I know how to do the Lindy hop and the jitterbug."
I sat bolt upright, and Akinli rolled his eyes.
"I swear, if you tell me you can jitterbug, I'm going to . . . I don't even know. Set something on fire. No one can dance like that."
I pursed my lips and dusted off my shoulder, a thing I'd seen Elizabeth do when she was bragging.
As if he was accepting a challenge, he shrugged off his backpack and stood, holding out a hand for me.
I took it and positioned myself in front of him as he shook his head, grinning.
"All right, we'll take this slow. Five, six, seven, eight."
In unison, we rock stepped and triple stepped, falling into the rhythm in our head. After a minute, he got brave and swung me around, lining me up for those peppy kicks I loved so much.
People walked by, pointing and laughing, but it was one of those moments when I knew we weren't being mocked; we were being envied.
We stepped on each other's toes more than once, and after he accidentally knocked his head into my shoulder, he threw his hands up.
"Unbelievable," he said, almost as if he was complaining. "I can't wait to tell my mom this. She's gonna think I'm lying. All those years dancing in the kitchen thinking I was special, and then I run across a master. ~ Kiera Cass

I graduated in 2004 with an English degree and a case of imposter syndrome so intense that I convinced myself I "didn't have enough ideas" to become a writer of any kind. ~ Lindy West

People you love aren't defined by objects, but by the place they hold in your heart. ~ Lindy Zart

My poor sister was forced to be in the plays that I would write. We would go to my grandma's retirement building and perform 'Phantom of the Opera.' ~ Lindy Booth

You can't stand right next to a storm and expect not to get impacted by it. ~ Lindy Zart

Each song had a story to tell, each song was a small, but significant tale. ~ Lindy Zart

Common Sense" without growth, curiosity, or perspective eventually becomes conservatism and bitterness. ~ Lindy West

We're all building our world, right now, in real time. Let's build it better. ~ Lindy West

We cannot pander or wait for consensus; the world is too big and complicated and rigged. We are saying the things that people don't like. ~ Lindy West

People go on and on about boobs and butts and teeny waists, but the clavicle is the true benchmark of female desirability. It is a fetish item. Without visible clavicles you might as well be a meatloaf in the sexual marketplace. And I don't mean Meatloaf the person, who has probably gotten laid lotsa times despite the fact that his clavicle is buried so deep as to be mere urban legend, because our culture does not have a creepy sexual fascination on the bones of meaty men.

Only women. Show us your bones, they say. If only you were nothing but bones. ~ Lindy West

The wind picked up. The power went out. The windows rattled. I took an Ambien and curled into a ball and tried to hide from the dark and the wind in the bed that had been ours, the first bed I'd ever shared with someone who loved me and picked me and then changed his mind. ~ Lindy West

Art has no obligation to evolve but it has a powerful incentive to do so. Art that is static, that captures a dead moment, is nothing. It is, at best, nostalgia; at worst, it can be a blight on our sense of who we are, a shame we pack away. Artists who refuse to listen, participate, and change along with the world around them are not being silenced or punished by censorious college sophomores, they are letting obsolescence devour them voluntarily. Political correctness is just the inexorable turn of the gear. Falling behind is preventable. ~ Lindy West

It's north and south pole. When you win you feel great, but when you lose it, it's like you've lost 10 games in a row. ~ Lindy Ruff

when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time - that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women's safety and humanity are secondary to men's pleasure and convenience. I ~ Lindy West

There is nothing novel or comedic or righteous about men using the threat of sexual violence to control non-compliant women. This is how society has always functioned. Stay indoors, women. Stay safe. Stay quiet. Stay in the kitchen. Stay pregnant. Stay our of the world. IF you want to talk about silencing, censorship, placing limits and consequences on speech, this is what it looks like. ~ Lindy West

I desperately want to help, but the truth is, I don't know. I used to hate myself; eventually, I didn't anymore. I used to be shy; eventually, I made my living by talking too much. ~ Lindy West

The real scam is that being bones isn't enough either. The game is rigged. There is no perfection. ~ Lindy West

If you get scared tonight, you can sleep with me. Or even if you don't. ~ Lindy Zart

Money equals wealth yes. But doing something that gives you meaning, that is what leads to a rich life. ~ Lindy Tsang

You know the saying that nothing can last forever? It's partly true. Feelings can stop, people can leave us, but regardless, a piece of them is always with us, in some way. Maybe it's in a song, or a forgotten note, a picture. Even when you no longer love someone or can't be with them, you still remember them, you still remember good parts of them, and you smile. Why worry about it lasting or not? Even if it doesn't, you'll still have a part of him. And he'll still have a part of you. And isn't that what's really important? Holding the best pieces of someone in our hearts so that the love never really fades, so that we don't forget that we once knew them, and they were special to us. ~ Lindy Zart

Every day is a new day to be awesome. ~ Lindy Zart

Something you want to tell me?"
"Um ... your scrub top's on inside out?"
"What?" He glances down. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
I shrug. "It was funny. ~ Lindy Zart

Feminism is really just the long slow realization that the things you love hate you. ~ Lindy West

I'm messy and a slob and I like beer a little too much. I work long hours and I like to be outside more than inside. I'm restless and reckless, and yes, I admit, a pervert. Upon occasion. But I love you. I've never loved anyone like I love you, Sara. Never will. I want to be with you until I take my last breath, and even when I take my last breath, I want it to be next to you. Please. Redeem my selfish soul and make it better, make me better. Say you'll be my wife. ~ Lindy Zart

The whole art of merchandising," he said, "consists of appealing to the imagination. ~ Lindy Woodhead

I struggle to conceive of the "resilience" I've developed in my job as a good thing - this hardening inside me, this distance I've put between myself and the world, my determination to delude myself into normalcy. From the cockpit, it feels like much more of a loss than a triumph. It's like the world's most not-worth-it game show: Well, you've destroyed your capacity for unbridled happiness and human connection, but don't worry - we've replaced it with this prison of anxiety and pathological inability to relax! ~ Lindy West

I'd rather be weird than a clone of everyone else. ~ Lindy Zart

Real change is slow, hard, and imperceptible. ~ Lindy West

I literally think that if you're in this business, it has to be the only thing you can and want to do, because it's so hard. You have to be fully committed - and partially insane - to wake up every morning and be like, 'I'm an actor.' ~ Lindy Booth

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. ~ Lindy West

So fine, if you insist. This is a witch hunt. We're witches, and we're hunting you. ~ Lindy West

DEATH DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE. ~ Lindy Zart

Me, the girl with no friends, yet who has the heart that wants to save everyone. ~ Lindy Zart

My heart is breaking. My heart... my heart is Rivers, and it is breaking. ~ Lindy Zart

That's the thing about 'what ifs'; they don't matter. They don't change anything. All they do is make it unable for you to heal. ~ Lindy Zart

So I was forced to go to school wearing a menstrual pad belt that had been in our first aid drawer since approximately 1961. If you've never seen one of these things, because you haven't been to the antiquities museum, it is a literal belt that goes around your waist, with two straps that dangle down in your front and back cracks, ice cold metal clips holding a small throw pillow in place over your shame canyon. ~ Lindy West

Going to make the time we have together unforgettable. I'm going to fuse you to me, so that there is no way of knowing where the separation between you and me begins - or even if there is one. I'm going to fill this summer with us, so that when you look back on it, all you remember is me, and when I look back on it, all I remember is you. I'm going to put as much life into now as I can. Like you did for me. Now it's my turn. ~ Lindy Zart

The narrative for girls is that you just hang around and wait to be "chosen" and then you belong to somebody and you live happily ever after. There isn't room for more nuanced concerns about the creepy proprietary nature of that relationship model, or the breadth of what fulfillment really means for women. ~ Lindy West

I just didn't want to admit that he was dead. ~ Lindy Boggs

I like to thin the woman who ran the clinic would have done that for anyone - that there's a quiet web of women like her (like us, I flatter myself), stretching from pole to pole, ready to give other women a hand. She helped me even though she didn't have to, and I am forever grateful. But I also wonder what made me sound, to her ears, like someone worth trusting, someone it was safe to take a chance on. I certainly wasn't the neediest person calling her clinic. The fact is, I was getting that abortion no matter what. All I had to do was wait two weeks, or have an awkward conversation I did not want to have with my supportive, liberal, well-to-do mother. Privilege means that it's easy for white women to do each other favors. Privilege means that those of us who need it the least often get the most help. ~ Lindy West

She throws away the inedible toast and looks at me, her blue eyes sad. "I'm a bad cook."

My first inclination is to say, "You're just realizing this now?", but I don't. Instead I shrug. "You're good at a lot of other things."

"I can't crochet either."

I purse my lips to keep from agreeing. "Well...you - "

"And I can't sing. I don't even remember the shade of my natural hair color and I've had this outfit since the eighties."

I glance at her red top and tan pants. Yeah. Those should really go - along with a lot of other things in the house. "You're sort of making it hard for me to make you feel better when you keep tossing all the things you aren't good at, at me." I brighten. "You can dance! You're a great dancer."

"I'm having a mid-life crisis."

"You're forty-six," I scoff. "You're too young for that. I mean, maybe in four years... ~ Lindy Zart

I definitely have an alter ego that can come out and get me out of situations where I'm having social anxiety. I can take a deep breath and create a bubble so I can perform in some way. ~ Lindy Booth

even in a world of pain and ugliness, cruelty and loss, there are still amazing things to cling to, to tell us not to give up, not to lose hope, and continue on to another day. There is life in death, always. ~ Lindy Zart

I'd rather have a 16, as in Stanley Cup playoff wins. ~ Lindy Ruff

Privilege means that it's easy for white women to do each other favors. Privilege means that those of us who need it the least often get the most help. I ~ Lindy West

Your father ... isn't good with emotions." "Yeah. Figured that out a while ago." Like, when I was four and cried because our family cat died and he offered to have it stuffed as a means to make me feel better. It didn't. ~ Lindy Zart

I feel like I've been swimming in the open ocean and now I'm exhausted and floating. ~ Lindy Zart

So no, excuse me, we will not play likability anymore. It's an endless runner - a game with no progress and no finish line - that women are expected to chase, that keeps us from doing the real work, accruing the real power. Chasing likability has been one of women's biggest setbacks, by design. I don't know that rejecting likability will get us anywhere, but I know that embracing it has gotten us nowhere. ~ Lindy West

It has been a privilege beyond belief for me to have represented the State of Louisiana in Congress and to have been given the blessed assignment of U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. ~ Lindy Boggs

The duration of our mortality is spent having instances transform us, whether we want them to or not. We're molded into some form of us only to have another moment morph us into another variation of us. It is endless. When someone asks what made someone change, I always ask, What didn't? ~ Lindy Zart

The sound of his stable, strong heart soothing. She let her eyes close, and though her heart was torn and possibly irreparable, like Lincoln's, with the two ruined pieces there was one whole heart. ~ Lindy Zart

I just, I don't know, put up so many invisible walls between us when I was younger that it seems impossible to tear them down now. ~ Lindy Zart

And isn't it weird that no one wants to change who they are, yet they aren't even trying to be themselves? Just a thought. We're all so focused on being somebody, and it's usually never the real us. ~ Lindy Zart

Where do you get your confidence?" is a complex, dangerous question. First of all, if you are a thin person, please do not go around asking fat people where they got their confidence in the same tone you'd ask a shark how it learned to breathe air and manage an Orange Julius.

As a woman, my body is scrutinized, policed, and treated as a public commodity. As a fat woman, my body is also lampooned, openly reviled, and associated with moral and intellectual failure. My body limits my job prospects, access to medical care and fair trials, and - the one thing Hollywood movies and Internet trolls most agree on - my ability to be loved. So the subtext, when a thin person asks a fat person, "Where do you get your confidence?" is, "You must be some sort of alien because if I looked like you, I would definitely throw myself into the sea. ~ Lindy West

I wear embarrassing like a velvet coat of awesomeness. ~ Lindy Zart

My dad is gone now and so is that Seattle, but walking in the places he walked, puffing up the same hills, turning the same corners, I feel him in the ridges and grooves of my city--we are close, superimposed, separated only by time, and what's that? This is the only religion that I can relate to. ~ Lindy West

If people care about you, they won't give up on you, no matter what you've done in the past or what you do in the future.

We aren't programmed that way. We're made to find hope in the most hopeless of places and in the people that seem the least likely to deserve it, because they really need it the most, and something in us knows that, at least subconsciously.

It's what makes us human. No one is unworthy. Not even you. If people want to have faith in you, let them. And really, you can't stop them. It's not up to you. ~ Lindy Zart

Americans are addicted to plausible deniability. If we can't even think critically about something as relatively insignificant as an internet cat or admit that a person might give a pet an offensive name or apologize honestly for small, careless slights, how are we ever going to reckon with the fact that our country was built by slaves on land stolen from people on whom we perpetrated a genocide? What the f*ck are we going to do? Our propensity for always, always, always choosing what is comfortable over what is right helped pave the road to this low and surreal moment in US history. ~ Lindy West

It is true that no one can save you, no one but yourself. And sometimes ... even you cannot save you, no matter how much you wish it was untrue. Sadly, some things are not meant to be saved. ~ Lindy Zart

You know what is so appealing about you, in a twisted, messed up kind of way?"
"What's that?"
"You have no idea how tactless you are."
"Well. I have some idea," I grumble. ~ Lindy Zart

Better?" I went from holding her hand to hugging her. "Lindy, you loved me when I wasn't even human.
You kissed me when I had no lips. You saw what was deep down inside me when I wasn't even sure
about it myself. Believe me, there's no way I could do better. I think you're perfect. ~ Alex Flinn

My feet are not a good part of my body. They definitely have suffered for my art. They're, like, all bunions and blisters. ~ Lindy Booth

Why, when men hate themselves, it's women who take the beatings. ~ Lindy West

This sounds geeky, but when I run, I like to listen to musicals like 'Les Miserables.' The soundtracks are 75 minutes or longer, and I keep going until the story ends, so it feels like a good workout. ~ Lindy Booth

I don't know any woman who hasn't experienced some level of sexual predation, from catcalls, to unwanted advances at bars, to emotional manipulation, to violent rape. I certainly have - even "unrapeable" me. All women do need to worry about rape. ~ Lindy West

There's no "winning" when it comes to dealing with Internet trolls. Conventional wisdom says, "Don't engage. It's what they want." Is it? Are you sure our silence isn't what they want? Are you sure they care what we do at all? From where I'm sitting, if I respond, I'm a sucker for taking the bait. If I don't respond, I'm a punching bag. I'm the idiot daughter of an embarrassed dead guy. On the record. Forever. ~ Lindy West

You have to swallow, every day, that you are a secondary being whose worth is measured by an arbitrary, impossible standard, administered ~ Lindy West

Something remarkable can always be the result of something devastating, if you choose to find that one positive in a nest of negatives. ~ Lindy Zart

So I said, "I'll miss you. You are the truest friend I've ever had."
I could see that my words were a knife in his gut. Yet, it seemed kinder than the alternative, for him to know I love him, but that I'm leaving anyway. ~ Alex Flinn

I am a lip person. I constantly need a really good lip moisturizer with me. Mine is a Clairin's moisture replenishing lip balm. I have two of them: I have one I keep next to my bed, so it's the first and last thing in the morning and evening, and then 10 times a day in my purse. ~ Lindy Booth

Just live! Live now! Don't wait, and don't let anyone tell you that you're a work in progress. ~ Lindy West

Life is not about having the best of everything but rather making the best out of everything. You cannot experience true fulfillment unless you learn to serve others. Instead of looking around, we should look within. Life isn't about what we have but rather what we give. ~ Lindy Tsang

Peanut butter is my favorite food."
Rivers looks at me for a long time, finally shaking his head. He moves to my side, reclining next tome. "Peanut butter is not food."
"Then what is it?"
"I don't know. A condiment. Like ketchup or mustard."
"Really, Rivers? Do you put peanut butter on a hamburger?"
"Do you eat it plain?" he shoots back.
"Yes."
"Okay, do most people eat it plain? ~ Lindy Zart

Maybe I'm a little callous, a little insensitive, a little self-centered, but hey, that's how I roll. ~ Lindy Zart

We can mention periods obliquely, of course, when we want to delegitimize women's real concerns, dismiss their more inconvenient emotions, and perpetuate the myth that having outie junk instead of innie junk (and a male gender identity) makes a person an innately more rational and competent human being. ~ Lindy West

If you're the very luckiest kind of astronaut ever, your big payoff is that you get to visit a barren airless wasteland for five minutes, do some more math, and then go home - ice cream not guaranteed. ~ Lindy West

We only get one life. Wasting someone's time is the subtlest form of murder. ~ Lindy West

Maybe you are thin. You hiked that trail and you are fit and beautiful and wanted and I am so proud of you, I am so in awe of your wiry brightness; and I'm miles behind you, my breathing ragged. But you didn't carry this up the mountain, You only carried yourself. How hard would you breathe if you had to carry me? You couldn't. But I can. ~ Lindy West

Internet trolling wasn't just a symptom, it was a canary. Trolls tested the boundaries of how far society would allow racism, misogyny, and transphobia to be normalized. Would anyone do anything? Would anyone take action? Would anyone powerful take this seriously? The answer turned out to be no. Those of us on the receiving end begged for help, and were told to grow a thicker skin, because the Internet "isn't real life." Until, surprise, the Internet became president, and we as a society were so inured to hate speech - our boundaries had been so thoroughly obliterated and "political correctness" so stigmatized - that we had no defense. There ~ Lindy West

And being an "equal opportunity offender" - as in, "It's okay, because Daniel Tosh makes fun of ALL people: women, men, AIDS victims, dead babies, gay guys, blah blah blah" - falls apart when you remember (as so many of us are forced to all the time) that all people are not in equal positions of power. "Oh, don't worry - I punch everyone in the face! People, baby ducks, a lion, this Easter Island statue, the ocean…" Okay, well that baby duck is dead now. ~ Lindy West

it is easier to mock and deride individual fat people than to fix food deserts, school lunches, corn subsidies, inadequate or nonexistent public transportation, unsafe sidewalks and parks, healthcare, mental healthcare, the minimum wage, and your own insecurities. ~ Lindy West

A lazy writer (it's easy to hate things) or a versatile one? I don't believe in an afterlife. We live and then we stop living. We exist and then we stop existing. That means I only get one chance to do a good job. I want to do a good job. ~ Lindy West

Part of living is accepting you do not control everything. ~ Lindy Zart

Please don't forget: I am my body. When my body gets smaller, it is still me. When my body gets bigger, it is still me. There is not a thin woman inside me, awaiting excavation. I am one piece. I am also not a uterus riding around in a meat incubator. There is no substantive difference between the repulsive campaign to separate women's bodies from their reproductive systems - perpetuating the lie that abortion and birth control are not healthcare - and the repulsive campaign to convince women that they and their body size are separate, alienated entities. Both say, "Your body is not yours." Both demand, "Beg for your humanity." Both insist, "Your autonomy is conditional." This is why fat is a feminist issue. All ~ Lindy West

My abortion was a normal medical procedure that got tangled up in my bad relationship, my internalized fatphobia, my fear of adulthood, my discomfort with talking about sex; and one that, because of our culture's obsession with punishing female sexuality and shackling women to the nursery and the kitchen, I was socialized to approach with shame and describe only in whispers. But the procedure itself was the easiest part. Not being able to have one would have been the real trauma. ~ Lindy West

When I was a child, I liked to create. I was told by many I was unique. I liked that word. I liked how it was spelled and I liked how it sounded on my lips. At a young age, I decided I wanted to be that. It helped that I had the right personality for it. ~ Lindy Zart

I think ... what you need to find is a way not to feel bad about living. ~ Lindy Zart

For breakfast, I make an amazing protein shake with fruit, Greek yogurt, protein powder, flaxseed oil and honey. It's a nice way to get a healthy start and a little bit of sweetness, too. ~ Lindy Booth

She had done worse, all right, lots worse. She had been a thief, a pimp, a blackmailer, a junkie, a liar and a cheat. She had pretended to love men she had despised. She had done it all, and none of it had worked. Every time she got into a place where she might have had a chance, something inside her had fired up and she ruined her chances. Always…Her whole life was a clutter of three-day jobs, punctured ambitions and drug-deadened hangovers.
'Oh Lindy,' she cried out. 'Help me! Help me!' She clenched her pillow and sobbed. It had been more than twenty years since she had shed any tears for anybody. Now these tears were for herself. ~ Don Carpenter

As a public official and being so highly visible, I have a responsibility to make it very clear that those people who will have cancer at one point in their lives will be able to function. ~ Lindy Boggs