mlact > mlact's Quotes

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“You see when a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are.”
― J.M. Barrie

“...and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to mind with ambiguous alterations--sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“Haven’t you been listening to a single thing I’ve told you? I loved Celia, but I also, before her, loved Don. In fact, I’m positive that if Don hadn’t turned out to be a spectacular asshole, I probably never would have been capable of falling in love with someone else at all. I’m bisexual. Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box, Monique. Don’t do that.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of fucking story.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“The clearest metaphor I had for my own gender identity in college was the image of a scale. A huge weight had been placed on one side, without my permission. I was constantly trying to weigh down the other side. But the end goal wasn't masculinity - the goal was
b a l a n c e.”
― Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer: A Memoir

“As I pondered a pronoun change, I began to think of gender less as a scale and more as a landscape. Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while others must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.”
― Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer: A Memoir

“My deepest emotional relationships have always been with women. Did that mean I was a lesbian? But my sexual fantasies involved two male partners. Was I a gay boy tapped in a girl's body? The knowledge of a third option slept like a seed under the soil.”
― Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer: A Memoir

“Music is a foreign language which everyone knows but only musicians can speak.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1981-2011, With Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes, and Miscellany

“Art is edited truth — edited to give it shape, rhythm, speed and punch. I've quoted the Communist dictum before: "If it isn't art, it isn't propaganda." Art is skill in the service of passion.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1981-2011, With Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes, and Miscellany

“Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“But then I get that feeling I do, to make art is selfish. To art is forgetful, even if what I try to forget still finds its way on the canvas; even in its absence, I am avoiding it all, wanting everything else I’ve never had. …”
― Ari Tison, Saints of the Household

“Okay, so can I really TRUST ANYONE?

Well, it can be difficult to decide who to trust. If you're not sure if you can trust a source, ask a librarian. Librarians are trained to help you find reliable information.”
― Elise Gravel