My Autobiography of Carson McCullers Quotes

“I occupy the category woman, and that category must expand to contain me. In all my outfits.”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

“Books seem to find me when I’m ready for them, or else I abandon them.”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

“But also because I don’t feel like I was ever actually in. I feel more like, growing up in a conservative, reticent community, I just didn’t know—for lack of example and lack of vocabulary—what I was, what I could be, that I could love women and still be myself.”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

“As my friend, lesbian artist Harmony Hammond, writes of coming up in the 1960s and ’70s, “to be both a woman and an artist was considered a contradiction of identities.” And now suddenly I have no choice but to face the possibility that this moment is no different”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

“Which is: not masculine, not feminine, but a both that becomes other.”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

“for a moment I let myself think that maybe this painter was into me because he couldn’t determine my gender without asking,”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

“was smiling; I think I was kind of pleased. I remember it as a happy moment. New heights in androgyny achieved! But I also instinctively took it as a kind of flirtation.”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

“comfort and ease of conversations centered around work and ideas. Hardly anyone is talking about their kids. I”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

“Years into this tunnel of research, I’ve solved the mystery of the collection of nightgowns and coats: she was a sick person. She wore, predominately, nightgowns, and often put a beautiful coat over them in photos.”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir

“I was still adjusting to the reality of my diagnosis, the reality that I would almost always feel weak, tired, slow. I spent a lot of time researching other possible explanations for my symptoms, acute conditions that could be cured expediently. It felt better to me to imagine a parasite than to accept that this sloth-like creature was just who I was. Only later did it occur to me that I might very well be feeling possessed in other ways.”
― Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir