Every Monday, we're rounding up things--small and big--that made us stop and think. Today, we were moved and inspired by two survivors of violence, a writer reporting from the domestic front, a woman who stopped waiting to be chosen and more...  

Writer Ruth Davis Konigsberg on the "chore wars" being waged in American homes:
Actress Brit Marling on co-writing scripts with roles for herself:
"How terrifying to surrender your life to being chosen all the time. Writing so that I can act became a way of having not more control over my future but not having to wait for permission."

Tom Ford on the universality of the mid-life crisis:
"It comes to everybody, maybe in your thirties, maybe in your forties, maybe in your sixties or seventies, who knows. You get to the moment where you feel the clock is ticking and you are wondering if you are really getting the most out of your life."

Kara Curtis, a morbidly obese woman in upstate New York, speaking to NPR about her struggle with weight and shame:
"There were periods of time when I used to hang skinny pictures of myself up on my fridge. But that was brutal and mean. And I don't want to be brutal and mean to myself."

Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.



* Stephen Colbert breaks character for Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project. [It Gets Better via The Daily What]

* Want to catch a good mood? When Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon reprise their roles as hip-hop chroniclers in "History of Rap, Take 2," their enthusiasm is positively contagious. [Vulture]

* "The magic of the relationship between the baseball field and its beyond is such as to invite the grandest mythical and metaphorical projections."—Herschel Farbman in "Baseball Fans and the Ball in the Stands" [The Awl]

* This old time sling shot is guaranteed to be a hit with any guy who is on good terms with his inner child. [Hicoree's Hard Goods]

* And if you're worried you might eventually regret gifting a weapon that has the potential to destroy both your favorite lamp and your vision, you can still satisfy the boyish curiosity of men and children alike with this neat study about how suits of armor influenced medieval battles. [BBC]

* "In our crucial human capacities to think, to create, to work, to love, I do not see men and women as different."—Robert Olen Butler, author of A Small Hotel, in O's Twitter chat with him.