Tash Hearts Tolstoy Quotes

“I know what I want and what I don’t want. I’ve never wanted sex. Never. I’ve never understood why it has to be in every book and movie and television show ever made. I never figured out why porn is such a huge thing. I'll be fine if no guy ever takes his shirt off for me. I’m not scared, I just don’t want it.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“If you want a chance at being happy, exist. Because yes, life can suck, but as long as you're alive, there's a chance you can be happy.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“Now, listen. I would. Rather. Hug you. Than be with. Anyone else. Just. Hug you. Do you. Want to. Hug me. Back.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“My body has decreed that I shall nap, and nothing will stand in my way.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“I prefer what happens before the kiss: the accidental brush of a shoulder, the spark of a stolen glance, the seemingly throwaway comment that is steeped in history and means so much more.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“I wonder if this is how everyone is destined to live: hopping from familiar space to familiar space until all the familiar spaces turn into one big blurry memory of nothing in particular.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“The woman gives me an unflinching glare. It’s faces like this that have me convinced people really did watch gladiators and public executions for fun.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“I reflect, not for the first time this week, that the twenty-first century is a screwed-up place to be. How is this even a normal human interaction? Back in the old days people waited weeks, even months, to receive letters, and that had to suck. But on a regular day, when they were out and about having normal chats, no one had to wait in crippling suspense to see if their conversation partner would deign to answer them. If said partner remained unresponsive for a full three minutes, the only possible explanation would be that they’d had a stroke, not that they’d heard the question and didn’t want to answer for another few hours.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“Kisses bring viewers out of the woodwork. That’s pure and simple fandom fact, and #KevinThursday is a prime example. A kiss is the culmination of everything unspoken—all the hints and hopes and uncertainties in a budding romance. Until that moment, it’s heat and simmer, heat and simmer. It’s a look, a word, a gesture. But the kiss is the boiling point. It’s what everyone waits on and cheers for.

I get that, but personally? I prefer what happens before the kiss: the accidental brush of a shoulder, the spark of a stolen glance, the seemingly throwaway comment that is steeped in history and means so much more. That’s what I love best, and it’s what I best direct.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“This is my interpretation: If you want a chance at being happy, exist. Because yes, life can suck, but as long as you’re alive, there’s a chance you can be happy. And maybe that’s a dismal way to look at life, but I think there’s hope there.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“You know,” he says, “people always say if they could take their loved one’s pain away, they would. But think about if you actually could. It’d be such a nightmare. You would take someone’s pain, but then they would love you, so they’d just take it back, or someone else you love would take it from you, and someone they love would take it from them, and it would go on like that until the pain ended up with some person who loved but wasn’t loved back. Some sad, unloved person. And they would get stuck with the pain.”

“Damn, Paul. You go to dark places.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“There’s a certain brutality about repeating things to yourself, even if those things are good. After you stop purposefully reciting the words, they continue in an automatic loop, wearing down a groove in your brain. I’ve experienced this before with Taylor Mears’s video and with some texts from Thom. Certain words hop aboard the Endless Loop Train and go around the track again and again and again, draining the fuel of my very consciousness.

And that’s when it’s good words. With bad words, it’s much, much worse.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“I’m worried that telling Jay will be the equivalent of stomping on his foot. To throw out my lack of sexuality when Jay is getting harangued every day for the expression of his own? It seems so insensitive. It’s not like people are telling me I can’t get married or that I’m going to hell.

I’ve been part of Calhoun’s gay-straight alliance since freshman year. When I joined, I identified myself as an ally. During one of our meetings this past year, Tara Rhodes said, “Allies are important. They’re the ‘A’ in all our acronyms, after all!” And I wanted to stand up right then. I wanted to shout, “I’m real and here and just as confused as a lot of you!” But I stayed quiet, because I didn’t want to come out right there, in a basement classroom that smelled like whiteboard cleaner. Still, Tara’s comment bothered me for months after that. It made me feel like no one saw my “kind of people.” That we didn’t exactly count. And if I didn’t count in an effing GSA meeting, then where the hell was I supposed to go?”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“I just . . . didn’t know we were the only ones.”

“Well, you are,” I say. “And I don’t feel like I have to make that big a deal of it, or—or ‘come out’ in some big way or anything. I don’t want to.”

“No, I get that. I’ve never had the urge to stand in a public square and say, ‘I wanna do the dirty with menfolk.’ ”

“Exactly.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“For one thing, my father doesn’t approve of Leo because he is so very Russian. Dad would rather I be infatuated with a nice Czech author like Václav Havel or Milan Kundera, who are perfectly decent boys and all, but have you tried reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being? More like The Unbearable Pretension of Pretentiousness, am I right?”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“I don’t get it. How can people judge sex appeal as easily as that? By a simple video, one narrow look at a human, people whittle them down to a single quality: fuckability.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“Viral. I’ve always thought that’s an ugly way of putting it. As though the population of the Internet is one perpetually ill body, ravaged by disease after disease. Isn’t there a pleasanter substitute? For example, “going supernova.” Way more epic, and probably the better analogy: a colossal burst, followed by a gradual fade from memory.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“I spent several days desperately begging Jack to reconsider sending in that application. Each time, Jack calmly responded, “I’m not going to change my ideology, so why would I change the letter?”

Here’s the thing: I totally understand where Jack is coming from. I know plenty of really talented students at Calhoun who were turned down by GSA. And yeah, I know it’s a kind of beauty pageant, and that’s not fair. But if I had a chance to learn about filmmaking and screenwriting from qualified professionals, to meet artists my age from across the state, to earn scholarship money for college, why wouldn’t I take it? Sometimes you have to play by the world’s unfair rules. Unless, of course, you are Jack Harlow. Then you play by your own rules, no matter how many opportunities you have to deny yourself for the sake of “ideology.”

I don’t like Jack when she gets like that. Honestly, it scares me, because when Jack takes a stand that unflinching, it means someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong. And while I like to think Jack was just being way too persnickety about GSA, there’s this suspicion in the darker part of my mind that maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. Maybe I am weak in spirit, a total sellout, the kind of human that ancient Greek philosophers warned against associating with.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy