Book of Spells
I’ve begun compiling meaningful quotes into a notebook that was gifted to me. This way, I can return more easily to the words that hit my heart in a big way, words that help bring me back, words that lift me up, words with guidance. And I want to share a selection of these with you!
I hope you find these words moving, too. And I highly recommend you check out the sources. Because if you dig these small snapshots, you may also dig the bigger work / other works by these folks.
For all of the quotes below, I’ve credited the speaker, writer, show, movie, musician, or wherever the message came from.
I’ve learned in recent years that this notebook may be a type of common-place book. So, that’s pretty cool to know I’m part of a loooong history of folks jotting down bits and pieces of our lives, media we’re watching or listening to, texts we’re reading, etc.
“Stay in the dreamspace.”
— Tricia Hersey, PhD, Book: Rest is Resistance
“The intent of a sabbath is to save us. The intent of rest is to save us.”
— Tricia Hersey, PhD
Book: Rest is Resistance
“It’s okay to be scared, but it’s not okay to let fear get in the way of our lives anymore.”
— Alba to Xiomara, Show: Jane the Virgin, S5: E19 “Chapter 100” (finale)
“How do you catch a wave upon the sand?
…How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?”
— Movie: The Sound Of Music, Maria’s Song
“When you snuff out that creativity, that imagination, that curiosity that kids have - not just about the world around them, but about themselves - and then also encourage them to snuff it out of other kids, that then become teenagers, that then become adults, that do it to each other, that do it to children, and you hand them these rigid scripts and say, “This is what you’re supposed to do because of the stuff that you were born with in the in-between, down there. Now go, spread it to the masses.” How do you not then end up with adults that lack that imagination and curiosity to discover, to ask questions, to challenge things? And when those adults don’t exist, who do we turn to, to have the imagination to change things?”
— Kadija Mbowe, YouTube Video: He’s Femme, She’s Masc, It’s… “Confusing” TikTok?
“Play is when we escape time.”
— Rupi Kaur
Book: Home Body, Section 3:
Rest, Page 122
“There is not going to be a return to
that old person.”
— Heidi Priebe, YouTube Video: Healing Fucking Hurts
“I am grateful to not be realistic. And for the imagination and trickster energy shown to me by my ancestors. I am grateful that Harriet Tubman was unrealistic.”
— Tricia Hersey, PhD
Book: Rest is Resistance
“Secular mysterium tremendum.”
— Hank Green
YouTube Video: One Of The Most Important Images On Earth
Neil DeGrasse Tyson:
“We are prisoners of the present, forever transitioning between an inaccessible past and our unknowable future.”
Chuck:
“And in another dimension, we would have all the time in the world.”
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Chuck, YouTube: StarTalk
Episode on Dimensions
“Don’t accept apathy.
It’s time to care.
It’s time to give a damn.”
— Tyler Thrasher
Artist, Mad Scientist, Etc.
“Think! It ain’t illegal yet!”
— George Clinton
“Be yourself so loudly that others feel safe to be themselves that loudly, too!”
— Breanna Upton, aka BrattyxBre
Zine Club Issue #33 “Zine Ins & Outs”
“For me, to set a goal is to say I believe in the possibility of tomorrow. For me, it’s a quiet rebellion against nihilism.”
— Dasia Sade, YouTube Video: The Importance Of Still Showing Up For Life Even When It Feels Like The World Is Crashing Out, Posted: 2025 Feb 07
“One of the lessons of straightness is that you can belong if you are understood, so in order to be understood, you have to say, I am a man, I am a woman, I am this, I am category. That’s not love, that’s control.
Love is a commitment to one another’s perpetual and perennial mystery.
Love says, I will never understand you, I will never get you, but I don’t need to understand or get you because I’m here to be alongside you, not to consume you. The truth is affinity doesn’t come from pledging allegiance to our alienation.
Affinity actually comes from embracing one another’s unruliness. I love you because you’re just like me, by which I mean unknowable and unfurling.”
— Alok Vaid Menon, YouTube Short: Compassion Doesn’t Require Comprehension, Posted: 2025 May 11
“i want a parade
i want music
i want confetti
i want a marching band
for the ones surviving in silence
i want a standing ovation
for every person who
wakes up and moves toward the sun
when there is a shadow
pulling them back on the inside”
— Rupi Kaur, Book: Home Body
“Impeccability means “without sin.” Impeccable comes from the Latin pecatus, which means “sin.” The im- in impeccable means “without sin.” Religions talk about sin and sinners, but let’s understand what it really means to sin. A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself… Sin begins with rejection of yourself.
Self-rejection is the biggest sin that you can commit.”
— Don Miguel Ruiz, Book: The Four Agreements
“If you don’t understand, you don’t have to. But what you do have to do is not act like an ass.”
— Kadija Mbowe, YouTube Video: He’s Femme, She’s Masc, It’s… “Confusing” TikTok?
“Indigenous people survive because, despite settler colonial myths that place us in the past, we have always known that we live in the future.”
— Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, Article: We Live In The Future, Come Join Us
“I’m a rainbow. And I won’t let the things that happened to me take away my color or my joy or my softness.”
— Amina Mucciolo, aka Tassel Fairy
YouTube Short: My Origin Story, Part 6
“Why should I worry about rocking a sinking boat?”
— Band: Infinity Song, Song: Sinking Boat
“Yes, the world is fragile. But would you rather live in despair or act in hope?
…What if your small hopeful act
…Is the thing that changes the world’s trajectory?
Or just the trajectory of your world?
Or the world of someone else close to you?
Or a complete stranger?”
— Dasia Sade, YouTube Video: The Importance Of Still Showing Up For Life Even When It Feels Like The World Is Crashing Out, Posted: 2025 Feb 07
“I still have that voice in me that says, “Hello! You’re a little bit too zany. Your necklace!” You know? “You gotta tone it down! To be taken seriously, you have to speak like a man.” But then you realize there’s nothing serious about people who give keynote presentations and then cry themselves to sleep. There’s nothing serious about people who accrue all the business titles and die alone. I want a good life, which means an honest and vulnerable life.
And so, if that’s my choice, if I wanna die with dignity, and the fullest and freest version of myself, I gotta wear the goddamn necklace.
If we learn how to mute ourselves in small ways, then we learn how to mute ourselves in big ways. So, we have to practice. What style is, is practice. Practice for learning how to say, I’m gonna be me regardless of what you think about it.”
— Alok Vaid Menon, YouTube Short: Style As An Everyday Practice Of Authenticity, Posted: 2024 Dec 28
“…we are nothing except air
and fire and water and soil
we are people
who forget what we are made of
a people who talk about the weather
as if it’s mundane and not magic
as if the oceans
are not holy water
as if the sky
is not a vision
as if animals
are not our siblings
as if nature is not god
and rain is not god’s tears
and we are not god’s children
as if god is not the earth itself.”
— Rupi Kaur
Book: Home Body, Section 3:
Rest, Page 103
