Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I liked 'The Sun Also Rises.'
I miss my family every single day.
I definitely regret hurting people.
Empathy is not a betrayal of one's cause.
We know that we can't undo our whole lives.
It really bugs me that Twitter gets such a bad rep.
Arguing is fun when you think you have all the answers.
I don't believe any more that WBC has a monopoly on truth.
There's so much power in seeing the possibility of change.
I don't believe any more that God hates almost all of mankind.
In spite of overwhelming grief and terror, I left Westboro in 2012.
The very first soldier's funeral protest that I went to was in Omaha, Neb.
We held signs that said 'Thank God For Dead Soldiers,' 'Thank God For IEDs.'
What's important to me is how the Lord looks at me, more than anything else.
In my home, life was framed as an epic spiritual battle between good and evil.
I always joke about how I get excited to go to the grocery store without permission.
The idea that people feel that they have to be sympathetic to me? It's a funny concept.
I had never experienced the death of someone close to me until my grandfather passed away.
You can't listen to the whole world tell you you're crazy, without wondering, 'Am I crazy?'
I try to focus on using my energy to change things, but there are times when I feel so bad.
As a member of Westboro Baptist Church, I became a fixture on picket lines across the country.
How could we claim to love our neighbour while at the same time praying for God to destroy them?
Some people cannot believe there is an alternative interpretation of the Bible aside from their own.
If you look at who you were a year ago and aren't somewhat embarrassed, you're not growing as a person.
I wrote an apology for the harm I'd caused, but I also knew that an apology could never undo any of it.
Our duty was to declare God's standards to the world: no adultery, no fornication, no gays, no idolatry.
Discussing and dissecting opposing viewpoints with others on Twitter opened up a whole new way of thinking for me.
Assuming ill motives almost instantly cuts us off from truly understanding why someone does and believes as they do.
My first memories are of picketing ex-servicemen's funerals and telling their families they were going to burn in hell.
Once I saw that we were not the ultimate arbiters of divine truth but flawed human beings, I couldn't pretend otherwise.
My church's antics were such that we were constantly at odds with the world. That reinforced our 'otherness' on a daily basis.
I don't think that, if you do everything else in your life right and you happen to be gay, you're automatically going to hell.
When we engage people across ideological divides, asking questions helps us map the disconnect between our differing points of view.
Generally, people don't change their minds about fundamentally deeply held beliefs; it doesn't happen in an instant - it's a process.
The things I believe in now are grace and the power of human connection to change hearts and minds and the importance of civil dialogue.
Take heart, and be patient; change takes time but it is possible, and it's way more likely if we can reach out and disagree without demonizing.
I do send messages to my family; I send letters in the mail, and when I'm in town, I almost always leave something in the door of my house in Topeka.
I went to my mother right before I was set to go protest my first soldier's funeral and asked my mother: 'I need to understand why we're doing this.'
We thought it was our duty to go and warn people of the consequences of their sins, and I understood that to be the definition of loving our neighbour.
My family, they cannot have anything to do with us. They believe that, you know, their duty is to deliver me to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
I don't like to say I'm not a believer because I still feel like a believer in a lot of things, primarily hope and grace and the power of human connection.
My family thought - and thinks - very seriously about words. About language and what it means and how it shapes us and how it should shape us and change us.
I was born and raised in the Westboro Baptist Church, an infamous congregation started by my grandfather, and consisting almost entirely of my extended family.
I wanted to do everything right. I wanted to be good, and I wanted to be obedient, and I wanted to be the object of my parents' pride. I wanted to go to Heaven.
I no longer believe that the Bible is the literal and infallible word of God. And I don't believe in God as a figure in the sky listening to your prayers, things like that.
The pickets were just a fact of life. And the fact that people hated us from the time I was tiny, the fact that we were hated, I was taught, was a cause for great rejoicing.
We read the whole Bible, cover to cover, over and over again... It wasn't that we read selective parts of the Bible. It was that we interpreted it in this very selective way.
We know that we dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.
We know that we've done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn't the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren't so, and regret that hurt.
Loving someone whose ideas we find detestable can seem impossible, and empathizing with them isn't much easier - but it's so important to remember that listening is not agreeing.