Feminists From The United States

"And she turns to me with her hand extended Her palm is split with a flower, with a flame ...And she says, "I've come to set a twisted thing straight", And she says, "I've come to lighten this dark heart""

"Those whole girls... Breathe with ease Need no mercy Move in light Run in grace"

"If language were liquid It would be rushing in Instead here we are In a silence more eloquent Than any word could ever be These words are too solid They don't move fast enough To catch the blur in the brain That flies by and is gone."

"The light and sweet coffee color of her skin"

"Kids will grow like weeds on a fence She says they look for the light, they try to make sense They come up through the cracks like grass on the tracks She touches him goodbye"

"They only hit until you cry, After that, you don't ask why."

"By day give thanks By night beware Half the world in sweetness The other in fear"

"When the darkness takes you With her hand across your face Don't give in too quickly Find the thing she's erased"

"Travel, arrival Years of an inch and a step toward a source I'm coming to you I'll be there in time"

"And when they ask me, "What are you looking at?" I always answer, "Nothing much" (Not much)"

"I think they know that I'm looking at them I think they think I must be out of touch But I'm only In the outskirts And in the fringes On the edge And off the avenue And if you want me You can find me Left of center Wondering about you"

"If you were to kill me now right here, I would still look you in the eye"

"I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner I am waiting at the counter for the man to pour the coffee and he fills it only halfway and before I even argue he is looking out the window at somebody coming in."

""I've watched your palace up here on the hill And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will Only first I am asking you why."

"I have swallowed a secret burning thread."

""It is always nice to see you" Says the man behind the counter To the woman who has come in She is shaking her umbrella And I look the other way As they are kissing their hellos And I'm pretending not to see them"

"I won't march again on your battlefield."

"I can’t say ANYTHING. Everyone knows pretty much who I’m playing."

"A quirk of fate has put Chastain in a unique position. She is 30 now, and having worked solidly since leaving drama school with an impressive roster of A-list names, she is probably the most successful actress that no one has ever heard of. … This is about to change: over the next few months Chastain has so much coming out that she worries about being overexposed."

"I was on the set of Tree of Life. He was with me, and he asked me [if I] would play Eleanor Rigby in his film. And I said, “Yes, but it’s so much the male perspective,” [whispers] like the majority of films that are made. I said, “I’d like to know more about the woman. I’d like to know her perspective as well.” So he went and he wrote Her. And it was very collaborative because every day as he’d write, I’d be working, and I’d come back and he’d ask me questions about sisters or whatnot and how women talk with each other, and I found that to be really exciting. … he was the full writer. I was his bounce board. Not story things, because that’s the main part of the film, but just things like, you know, cutting the hair. You know, because girls, we all tell each other, “Don’t cut your hair when you’re pregnant, don’t cut your hair when you have a breakup or when a tragedy happens.” It’s something that we like to do when we’re in an emotional place for some reason. Right? But that’s something that a man may not know, that’s inherently female. And so it was my idea, I wanted Eleanor to cut her hair off, because then it connects to then her disappearing herself as well."

"Long before the #MeToo movement started, I was very upset when Jessica Chastain made statements against the film Last Tango in Paris. If you listen to her, that film should never have been made. To listen to her, Maria Schneider was raped. But Jessica Chastain wasn’t there, and it’s not true — I was on set. The scene was fiction."

"I don’t want to torture anything. … it’s about trying to live a life where I’m not contributing to the cruelty in the world. … While I am on this planet, I want everyone I meet to know that I am grateful they are here."

"The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door, He said "I am not fighting for you any more.""

"I open up the paper, there's the story of an actor who had died while he was drinking, it was no one I had heard of."

"We saw the choices. The audience will be given the opportunity. They can see Him and Her, or they can see Them. … Well, for the cinephiles and the people who really want to commit, I would definitely say, “See Him and Her.” It’s the full experience. … I’ve always thought Him and Her. But it’s funny, in Toronto, when Harvey Weinstein saw the film for the first time, he saw Her and Him, and he was determined. He was like, “That’s how it has to be seen!” So it depends."

"I’ll be the first unknown that everyone’s going to be sick of … People will say, “We have no idea what her name is, but she is everywhere!" … I did Salomé with Al Pacino, The Tree of Life with Terrence Malick, and all these films that were interesting and had great characters. But because they were so interesting, perhaps the directors had more control of them. They take their time, they’re not on a schedule."

"My name is Luka. I live on the second floor. I live upstairs from you. Yes, I think you've seen me before."

"If you hear something late at night, Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight, Just don't ask me what it was."

"Hear the beat of the drums Woah oh You better run run Woah oh Hear the beat of the drums Woah oh Cause I'm a warrior, I'm a warrior Cause I'm a warrior"

"Will you remember my name or at the end of the night is it all a game Or will you hold on to my hand together forever we will stand Or the sun will rise and you’ve had your prize And you don’t even know the color of my eyes"

"Marching into the woods in the darkness I'm Robin Hood breaking your fortress Light it up start the fire, gonna strike you Step aside cause I’m on my way to Rome, yeah I'm made of stone I walk the road alone Fighting for my throne Woah oh"

"Tonight I’m gonna make you mine Oh wait, that’s not supposed to be my line I’m waiting on you to make your move Boy I know that you think your smooth Show me what you got cause I got a lot Come on set your trap I want to get caught"

"You’re falling all over me I’m losing myself in your mystery I’m afraid of loving you, I’m afraid of losing me I’m over my head and I’m seeing red But I’m waiting right here for you in my bed"

"The zealots imposing their religion in public schools never understand that they’re even doing anything wrong. They think they’re being oppressed or attacked if they’re disallowed from indoctrinating everyone else’s kids. And it doesn’t help that all the kids in town have already been indoctrinated. Because they don’t understand what the problem is either, and and secular government requirement will invariably be seen as some sort of victimization, which feeds right into the typical Christian persecution complex. People like this never seem to understand the necessity of secular government until or unless they have to give fair consideration to Muslims. Then suddenly the Christians leap over to my side of the political spectrum, demanding separation of church and state just as I do. Hypocrites."

"The idea that certain races (or species) are ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ was not Darwin’s idea but the universal language of all prior naturalists since forever. Darwin acknowledges this, but does not contribute to it, other than to suggest that Caucasians are not the ultimate form of mankind."

"This is just my opinion, but when I listen to Muslims explaining their religion to each other, I get the impression that Islam is hateful and violent, but that it’s also pretty stupid; “full of shit”, as my dad would say -because none of it can be justified or shown to be true, and what little they do know can’t really imply what they say it does. The same thing goes for Christians. When I listen to Christians discussing their religion, I get the impression that they’re hateful too, but their violent reactions are culturally inhibited. So they compensate for that with a staggering level of bewildering stupidity, coupled with dishonesty. It sounds to me like pots and kettles accusing each other in the perfect example of the blind leading the blind. But when I listen to those Jews who still believe in God and the Bible, and I hear them arguing aspects of their beliefs, it strikes me that the foundation of Abrahamic religion is utterly empty, devoid of any possible meaning or value. I don’t want to say “who cares?”, because way too many people do. That’s what confuses and alarms me! How could anyone imagine that any of this is really true or really matters?"

"You’re not immortal, you’re not eternal and to believe otherwise is to diminish everything that you really have. Life is precious because it is short and there is nothing after it. There is no purpose and there is no destiny beyond anything you give it yourself. If you want your life to mean something try making someone else’s life meaningful. - “Give the Devil His Due”, 1st November 2014,"

"Let’s forget for the moment the generalizations about what the Muslim religion as a whole had to do with September 11th. How did anyone ever get the idea that Hinduism had anything to do with that whatsoever? And how is it that no one in this country can tell a Muslim or a Hindu apart from a Sikh? How do these people justify their own senseless stupidity? It pains me that our paranoid reactionary religiously-bigoted society produces people of such stark hatred and bewildering inanity."

"Everything that we set up for legislation that will promote Christianity will only pave the way for Islam later on because it is the fastest growing religion while Christianity is in a state of decline. Demographics change; you can’t fight religion with religion. What will happen is Islam will eventually dominate Christianity; there won’t be any Christians left. Fortunately, secularists, atheists, and nonbelievers are on the rise faster than even the fastest growing religion. You can’t fight religion with religion, but you can fight it with reason. That’s what the atheist groups are really all about."

"All I knew of Israel growing up was that they’ve been the hot-bed of militant violence forever. Abraham’s god of infinite love, forgiveness, and mercy spawned three major faiths, all of whom have been at war with each other, each since their inception, and it seems that God’s spyglass of magnified torment was usually focused right there. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read the Old Testament and noticed the patterns therein. If YHWH promised a holy land to his chosen people, they should expect more damnation than paradise. That would be consistent with the Bible’s blood-stained stories, and that’s the way we’ve always seen it on the news in my country. There would be less milk and honey, and more uprisings and explosions, especially when it means mixing or displacing so many fundamentally polarized religious and cultural groups. If I have not been completely mislead by the media, then maybe that’s why there are so many atheists in that area now."

"The pledges come from a believers’ standpoint. The country needs to earn the support of its citizenry. You can’t extort it. You can’t get people indoctrinated by always saying every morning before class where they’ll never question what you’ll do."

"In a sense, the American Dream was foreigners could come to this country and, through hard work, they could be successful, make a new start, and realise and fulfil their dream despite their caste or their religion in their homelands. So Trump erected a system that denies them all of that. A system that sets castes, restricts religion, prohibits foreigners, and breaks all of the groundwork for small business, and for them to be able to do anything."

"I’m gonna miss the old sith lord. He was the best pope atheists could hope for. He started out as a Hitler youth actually wearing a Nazi uniform. As a Cardinal, he famously conspired to conceal sex crimes against children for the sake of the church. As pope, he addressed an audience in an AIDS ravaged area of Africa, and told them that use of condoms actually increased risk of STDs. His objection to birth-control took precedence over human life. That is how evil he is."

"I am supportive of people. I am supportive of the American Dream Trump is trying to destroy. I want them to understand. Regardless of your religion, you don’t get special privileges because you claim to believe something different from everybody else. You don’t get special privileges because you get to claim that you believe the same things as the majority."

"There is no question on whether the prophets existed. We are talking about whether the religions they invented were true. Can you show me the truth of that? Of course, they can’t. None of them can. They don’t want to. They don’t need to. I have seen people make that admission too."

"When people use religion as their only reason for whatever laws they want to impose of people or on other things, these are always mostly unjust."

"I can show you the truth of evolution. I can show you the facts of evolution. I can show you the positively indicative and physical evidence that is exclusively concordant with one conclusion over any other. I can do that all day, but religion can’t. No religion can because they’re all just made up. They don’t have any truth at all in them, none of them. The best that you can get out of people is that they can give anecdotal nonsense or will cite logical fallacies or they will say, “Somebody wrote once that there were Christians back in the 1st century and that means Jesus existed.”"

"Think about every example, every time someone comes up with religion as the reason why they want to impose it. It is always stupid. It is always imposing bigotry or limitations against somebody else’s freedom because you want to pretend in your special brand of pixie dust that is different from the gods and monsters other people want to make up. That’s what it is all about. There is simply no true religion because literally none of it is true."

"Blasphemy is not a crime. It’s a right. It needs to be exercised. We have the right not to believe lies. That’s important. Freedom of religion means freedom from religion as well. You can’t have freedom to practice your religion if you’re not free from the dominant religion. It is basic sense."

"There certainly seems to be a strong correlation between religion and insanity. I’ve read a few papers comparing the logical and psychological aptitude of strong believers vs those with little or no faith at all, and the trends there all seem to be in our favor, but not to the point that religion causes the disorder. I think certain mental disorders can prompt religious beliefs, but that’s a different claim. I think religion provides a haven to conceal quite a lot of cognitive and psychiatric disorders as well as some social dysfunctions. But that doesn’t mean religion is a mental illness, regardless how accurate analogies of the God virus might be. I think there are circumstances when religion can be treated as a psychological condition, especially when it is the result of detrimental conditioning, but I wouldn’t confuse that with a psychiatric malady, which (I think) would have to be physiological/chemical."