Hello Cruel World Quotes

“I have this idea that every time we discover that the names we're being called are somehow keeping us less than free, we need to come up with new names for ourselves, and that the names we give ourselves must no longer reflect a fear of being labeled outsiders, must no longer bind us to a system that would rather see us dead.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“Let’s stop “tolerating” or “accepting” difference, as if we’re so much better for not being different. Instead, let’s celebrate difference, because in this world it takes a lot of guts to be different and to act differently.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101+ Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws

“And keep in mind that the you that makes life worthy of living today won’t be the same you that makes life worth living this time next year. Identities aren’t meant to be permanent. They’re like cars: they take us from one place to another. We work, travel, and seek adventure in them until they break down beyond repair. At that point, living well means finding a new model that better suits us for a new moment.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“You can have great autonomy in the things you choose to learn and pursue on your own time. When you're learning things that interest you, challenge you, and make life worth living, getting an education can be blissful and stimulating.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“Happy is a poor word for someone who's trying to live a rainbow-colored life in a black-and-white world.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“We have looked for myths that include us in great novels, music, the latest comic book, or even some stupid advertising campaign. We'll look anywhere for a mythology that embraces people like ourselves.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“You are worthy and capable of finding a way to live your life just the way you really are. And there are plenty of good people in the world who believe that a life like yours needs to be lived.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101+ Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws

“Those times when I couldn’t stand what I was, and I didn’t know how I could possibly be something else.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101+ Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws

“Try This: Imagine the world as a place where anyone can safely and even joyfully express themselves the way they’ve always wanted to. Nothing about the bodies they were born with or what they choose to do with those bodies – how they dress them, or decorate, or trim or augment them – would get people laughed at, or targeted, or in any way deprived of their rights. Can you imagine a world like that?”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“The standards of beauty in America's über-culture are purposefully set too high so that we will buy anything in our frantic scramble to become attractive. We are meant to feel crushed, inadequate, and less-than so that we'll buy more and more things in the vain hope of "fixing" ourselves.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“There are more and more visibly weird and freaky people in the world these days, and it’s high time we stop carrying forward the junior high school dynamic of excluding them all from our lives or worse . . . nailing them to some cross.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101+ Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws

“It's healthier for your soul to live outside and above a degraded moral code than within and beneath one.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“If someone is telling a lie, whether it's about you or anything else, you've got every right to call it a lie. You don't have to believe in or repeat any lies that you've been told. And just because the president of the United States mispronounces nuclear, it doesn't mean you have to. Claiming your own voice and language can be your best line of defence against any bully culture and any government that practices a politic of domination and exclusion. You are entitled to live bully-free and in a healthier political climate than that. It's possible.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“Are you breaking some either/or cultural law, just by being who you are? If so, you're not alone.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“When God says no to your harmless desires, it's time to get another God.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“Do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living...just don't be mean.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“Moral codes are useful only when we have descended to needing them.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws

“People who are reactionary try to keep the world from changing, rather than do the hard, but ultimately more realistic, work of changing themselves. People who don't see any way of changing themselves or the world spend a lot of time wishing they were dead.”
― Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws