“ I feel that my environment reflects my belief in the grace and art and elegance of living simply. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.4K
“ But love is really more of an interactive process. It’s about what we do not just what we feel. It’s a verb, not a noun. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.9K
“ Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.4K
“ Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner's love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 2.1K
“ Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment...'dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love which is to transform us.' Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.7K
“ All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 1.3K
“ Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 1.4K
“ Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 2.6K
“ The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.2K
“ Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.8K
“ To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.7K
“ Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 630
“ But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 1.5K
“ Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very selfdefinition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and preactice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and selfactualization in all relationships, their emotional wellbeing will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 666
“ the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.4K
“ To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 3.1K
“ Giving generously in romantic relationships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when the other person needs our attention. Attention is an important resource. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 990
“ When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 575
“ No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
“ I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own madeonthe spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, “Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight.” My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: “When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town – to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
“ Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner's love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 572
“ When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 79
“ Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 626
“ When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise. They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 2.9K
“ There will be no massbased feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a welleducated few. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 2.1K
“ To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself. ”
- Bell Hooks- Copy
- 2.5K
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