“I always get asked, ‘Where do you get your confidence?’….I think people are well meaning, but it’s pretty insulting. Because what it means to me is, ‘You, Mindy Kaling, have all the trappings of a very marginalized person. You’re not skinny, you’re not white, you’re a woman. Why on earth would you feel like you’re worth anything?'”

-Mindy Kaling, speaking to Parade Magazine

“The fact that I
am writing to you
in English
already falsifies what I
wanted to tell you.”
—      Gustavo Pérez Firmat

“Never let your age become bigger than the number of places you’ve visited.”
—      John, the septuagenarian pool shark who hustled me at billiards over the weekend

“Chicago will be there with open arms when you get some experience and someone is looking for a cracker jack, I mean cracker jane, reporter.”
—      My very wizened father

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.  “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse.  “You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

–Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit”