Ten Steps to Nanette

by Hannah Gadsby

I have skills, people, I know what I am doing, even if you don’t like it.

“Artists don’t invent the zeitgeist. They respond to it.”

Most people think that there are only two ways to respond to mortal danger: fight or flight. I’m sure they both have their merits but apparently my instinct is to sit very still and just have a bit of a think about things.

Closed minds are a disorder of the highest order.

We know that there is a strong correlation between low literacy levels and homophobia. But instead of investing in education, leaders were investing in hate, again.

Now, I know that by ensuring this room is filled with friends and family we are only really preaching to the choir. But who said the choir isn’t supposed to have a fucking brilliant time?

Because trauma won’t leave you alone until you feel safe, and safety is not something that an individual can summon on their own. Safety is not a gun. Safety is being able to trust that those around you WANT to protect you from harm. But if those around you don’t believe you are “like them,” then they will focus on the discomfort you make them feel, and that discomfort is not a safe space.

We don’t grieve for what we’ve lost but for what we never knew. We grieve because none of us can reconcile the beauty we can see in our past with the ugliness we were told to remember.

We need to stop romanticising mental illness as a pathway to artistic greatness. Mental illness is not a romance—a ticket to genius—it is excruciatingly isolating. It is a ticket to fucking nowhere.

“To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity.”

I knew better than most that “coping” takes a fuck-tonne more effort and energy than “thriving” ever will.

The best way to judge a woman is by the way she looks. The best way to know a woman is to let her speak her own story.