Self-care Quotes

• Because the cigarette or spliff was an indispensable technology, a substitute for speech in social situations, a way to occupy the mouth and hands when alone, a deep breathing technique that rendered exhalation material, a way to measure and/or pass the time. More important than the easily satisfiable addiction, what the little cylinders provided me was a prefabricated motivation and transition, a way to approach or depart from a group of people or a topic, enter or exit a room, conjoin or punctuate a sentence. The hardest part of quitting would be the loss of narrative function; it would be like removing telephones or newspapers from the movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age; there would be no possible link between scenes, no way to circulate information or close distance, and when I imagined quitting smoking, I imagined “settling down,” not because I associated quitting with a more mature self-care, but because I couldn’t imagine moving through an array of social spaces without the cigarette as bridge or exit strategy.

  

  Ben Lerner
  • Technology
  • Speech
  • Measure

• Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.

  

  Eleanor Brown
  • Serve
  • Vessel
  • Self-care

• It is only when we feel deprived that we resent giving to others. Self-care does not mean you stop caring about others; it just means you start caring more about you. Start thinking about yourself more and others less. Since you have a choice between taking care of someone else, or giving to yourself, try choosing yourself sometimes.

  

  Beverly Engel
  • Thinking
  • Choice
  • Self-care

• Selfish is caring for ourselves at others' expense ... Self-care is taking care of ourselves so that we can be there for others.

  

  Bill Crawford
  • Self-care