Self-Sabotage Quotes

“Sometimes now, almost two decades later, when I'm walking around New York, I'll pass a building that floods me with memories of a john or a trick that I turned in whatever apartment window I find myself staring up at. I'll stand on the sidewalk, looking into a window where "Jeff" once stood and made his ever-coveted hundred bucks. I can see him straining to carry his suitcases of worry up to another apartment to make another coin to put in his piggy bank of shame. And I can see him leaving again a half hour later, with a pep in his step from being a little bit richer, but with the glassy-eyed worry that he's ruining himself in the process. And I want to rush across traffic to this young version of myself, grab him, and look him directly in the eyes. First, he'll probably be terrified of this older, puffier, thicker walking portrait of Dorian Gray before him, but once he stops screaming at the ghoulish glimpse into his future, I want to hold him and tell him, "This will all be worth it.”
― Jeffery Self, Self-Sabotage: And Other Ways I’ve Spent My Time – An Honest, Funny Memoir of Gay Life in the South and Acceptance

“Out of my way, Mary!" some gay boy fresh off the Amtrak shouts as he charges ahead to the future that awaits him, with the ghosts of all the tribesmen who came and went before rooting him forward, shouting back in unison, "No names! No names!”
― Jeffery Self, Self-Sabotage: And Other Ways I’ve Spent My Time – An Honest, Funny Memoir of Gay Life in the South and Acceptance

“I was so lucky to have had a Gary in my life; his friendship influenced just about everything about me. I continue to wonder just how different a world would be if more Garys had survived. If guys of that generation had gotten to stick around and the tribe was still full, I suspect things would be a lot more joyful, colorful, loving, and creative. Perhaps every young scared-out-of-his-depth gay boy new to the city would find a loving support system like the one I had, and maybe, just maybe, the big gay world would be a better place. Or at the very least, a place with better modern musical comedies.”
― Jeffery Self, Self-Sabotage: And Other Ways I’ve Spent My Time – An Honest, Funny Memoir of Gay Life in the South and Acceptance

“You'll read about at just about every possible turn I found new and innovative ways of self-sabotage. Chewing up and spitting out opportunities while making enemies out of friends, friends out of whoever hands me my Prozac prescription every month at RiteAid. There's a lot of that in this book. Self-sabotage I mean. Certainly more than self-love or self-care.”
― Jeffery Self, Self-Sabotage: And Other Ways I’ve Spent My Time – An Honest, Funny Memoir of Gay Life in the South and Acceptance