Favorite Quotes

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place in the family of things."

"Growing up and seeing your parents' flaws is like losing your religion.
I don't believe in God anymore.
I don't believe in my father either."

"Children have no dignity, and I really admire that about them.
I love their ruthless response to injustices,
their desire to feed birds in the park,
to grieve the sea,
their right to be tired in public."

"I killed a plant once because I gave
it too much water. Lord, I worry
that love is violence."

"the worst thing about love is
i remember it.

i walk around all day
thinking: i'm going to die
in the universe
you loved me in.

i get so jealous of euthanized dogs."

"The trouble with you humans is that you are so concerned with staying afloat. Go ahead, be gouged open by love. Gulp that saltwater, sink beneath the waves. You're not a boat, you can go under and come up again, with those big old lungs of yours, those hard kicking legs."

"Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness."

"Don't worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets."

"She asked me to kill the spider
Instead, I got the most
peaceful weapons I can find

I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away

If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong place, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,

I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy."

"God said: GOD MADE YOU. GOD DOES NOT CARE IF YOU ARE "GUILTY" OR NOT.
I said: I CARE IF I AM GUILTY! I CARE IF I AM GUILTY!
...God was silent. Everything was SILENT.
I lay back down in the snow."

"Suffering feels religious if you do it right."

"P.S. Charles, I never hated you no matter what. I always loved you because you were my brother."

"...a husband or child can be replaced but who can grow me a new brother..."

"Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience."

"At what point is love itself a cage, only a way of binding, the yoke we all pull around each other to keep ourselves tied to a place, an idea, a moment in time? Anna, sweet Anna, good Anna, do you want to put a chain around my neck, too?"

"I love you like a rotten dog.
I love you like my canines are falling out of my gums,
Like a monster, like a beast
Like something not worth loving back."

"FRIEND. You must leave this house

USHER. How can I? These walls are my skin. This room is my heart. Besides, I have a sister."

"i sat by the lake last week and i offered my mother
a slice of my orange, and she said no
and i felt so lonely that i pretended i was two people
so i'd have someone to share with"

"Jessica has a forehead scar from the deep end of a pool. I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else."

"I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief."

"for old times sake is actually such a heartbreaking and beautiful sentiment. let's do it for the love that used to be here!! it is reason enough!!"

"If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"

"YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK! YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK! YOU CAN BITE AND SCRATCH AND BEG BUT YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK!"

"There is no salvation | There is nothing to be saved from
Faith is not a foundation for truth | Truth is found through observation
You are not eternal | And yet your substance cannot be destroyed
You have no purpose | Except that which you give yourself
Your body is your home | Not a temple to any god
Your heart is not a compass, directing you towards evil | It is a garden to be tended to"

"God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: so that humanity might share in the act of creation."

"How does one hate a country, or love one?...I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?"

"youve died a thousand times before who caaares just climb out of this grave again & again & again &agaian & agaian & again &again & aga"

"The cashier at the gas station asks me where I'm from
and when I say Ohio, he says Go buckeyes
which I understand as a stranger offering
language that can be shared. The way starlings
roost on a power line, scooching over
so the other can sit, flocked and fanning
feathers against rain and never in my life
have I seen a football game, but still I reply
Go buckeyes
which is a way of saying: I accept
I would root for you in imaginary stands.
Cheer at the same time in a darkened bar.
We are more alike than not, us two.
Here, let me shift, shuffle. Shelter for a moment
beneath this wing."

"He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I'm awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eye dark and fervent

"Tell me you love me," he says.

"Tell me again."

Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over
he gets to ask.
I get to tell"

"And if you missed a day, there was always the next,
and if you missed a year, it didn't matter,
the hills weren't going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coing back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit"

"NASA just revealed a heaven-like planet where you can drink a beer at the lake. And they're calling it Earth."

"i hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child & fell asleep on the couch during a family party. i hope you can hear laughter from the next room"

"I want to take clean cups out of the dishwasher
and put them in the cupboard at home
and the next morning I want to watch my wife drink from them
and I want to make her feel good"

"And God,
please let the deer
on the highway
get some kind of heaven.
Something with tall soft grass
and sweet reunion.
Let the moths in porch lights
go some place
with a thousand suns,
that taste like sugar
and get swallowed whole.
May the mice
in oil and glue
have forever dry, warm fur
and full bellies.
If I am killed
for simply living,
let death be kinder
than man"

"Oh, you know, you realize that grief is perhaps the last and final translation of love. And I think, you know, this is the last act of loving someone. And you realize that it will never end. You get to do this to translate this last act of love for the rest of your life. "

""Every bombed village is my hometown"
- James Baldwin

And every dead child is my child.
Every grieving mother is my mother.
Every crying father is my father.
Every home turned to rubble
is the home I grew up in.
Every brother carrying the remains
of his brother across borders
is my brother.
Every sister waiting for a sister
who will never come home
is my sister.

Every one of these people are ours,
Just like we are theirs.
We belong to them
and they belond to us."

"[Another quote here]"