My Life as a Goddess Quotes

“I’m not supposed to like myself, and I’m certainly not supposed to think that I should matter. The world has spent a lot of time telling me that, and in the past thirty or so years, I often listened, because we all listen. The world is mostly full of fine facts and good lessons, but some of those facts and lessons were built to keep you down.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“Our world is a constant, glorious understatement of miracles we did everything and nothing to earn. One evening every spring, I remind myself to notice them.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“Pardon me for a moment while I digress from my digression.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“In a world where people don't have space for you, you have to make your own space.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“Like most people who write collections of humorous personal essays, I was a bookish child. Other boys my age focused most of their time on yelling, trying to fart on each other, and generally not obeying rules. The vast majority of male eight-year-olds love to break rules. It is their greatest passion. Mashing their food together in the cafeteria and pretending it’s barf. Yelling “boobs” during a nice assembly where we learn about Irish step dancing. Maiming beauty. They love it. Their fierce defiance of what moms and teachers want out of them is what fuels their spirits. I have never understood these creatures.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“Because a goddess's job isn't to be good. It's to have compelling stories lyre players can tell about her at the court of kings and princes.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“We don’t like clubs for the same reason we don’t like people who like their own nakedness. Acceptance of yourself on the terms by which you exist now seems as arrogant, unambitious, and un-American as going to a place that is entirely about having fun in the present. Righteous, God-fearing citizens are too self-conscious to enjoy dancing or removing their clothes.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“In the foreword to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde wrote, “The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“At what point does the narcissism and cruelty of childhood stop being adorable and start being a possible symptom of a mental disorder?

I cannot answer this question. I don't understand Lori, despite four decades of attempts. Seeking to understand Lori is a black hole that sucks up everything around it. I'm tired of that. It meant that through much of my life in my family, I didn't get to have a story. This led me to an obsession with trying to think about the people, places, and things we don't think about.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“The clearest message sent to me by popular culture is that, as a fat person, I will not do important things. Fat people are not protagonists. We are not dynamic. We do not solve the problem. We are, in fact, often seen as the problem. We can be the friend or associate of the person who is solving the problem, but we are usually too cowardly or lazy to assist that person properly.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“There has hardly been an argument with a loved one in my adult life that did not involve the words "You think you know everything!" being launched at me. It is true. I do, often, think I know everything.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture

“Gay men are terrified of our own perspective. We love perspective, other people's perspectives, rarely our own. We write for other people, we act and use other people's words, we lip-synch and use other people's voices. We fear using our own perspective because it endangers us. It lays our desires and weaknesses bare. Camouflage is our defense. But defense isn't enough. It is survival, nothing more. It is managing your status as an object. Perspective is power.”
― Guy Branum, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture