Lord of the Butterflies Quotes

“I suffer
from unrequited self love.
I love myself, but I don’t
Love myself
back.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“When all the good in you
starts arguing with all the bad in you
about who you really are,
never let the bad in you
make the better case.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Come, love, make me better than I was. Come teach me a kinder way to say my own name”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Of all the violence I have known in my life I have never known violence like the violence I have spoken to myself,”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“It isn't that you don't like boys.
It's that you only like boys you want to be”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“I think the hardest people in the world to forgive are the people we once were, the people we are trying desperately to not stir into the recipe of who we are now.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“So at 12:31pm, when he decided not to-
when he came down, when the road opened-
I did, too, my whole world, my whole mind
went home with living proof
of what I'd only before known in theory:

that we are truly not alone in this,
that our veins are absolutely strings
tied to other people's kites,
that our lives are connected.
That my butterflies are never gone,

they're just flying around
in someone else's belly sometimes'.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“There will be music for you
one day.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Do you know science just proved an atom can exist in two places at the same time? No one is ever only at the scene of their crimes. Each of us is always also somewhere holy.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Let's hyperventilate like it's 1999.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Come tender as the trees
forgiving the books
for asking to be made.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“you don't lose a person
like a set of keys because you don't find them again
and you can still get to where you're going.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“When all the good in you starts arguing with all the bad in you about who you really are, never let the bad in you make the better case.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“I hear almost every argument is a race for the victim spot.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“It’s true what they say about the gays being so fashionable— our ghosts never go out of style, even life is like funeral practice: half of us already dead to our families before we die, half of us still on our knees trying to crawl into the family photo.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Mary Levine calls you a dyke
and you don't have the words to tell her she's wrong

and right. You just show up to her house
promising to paint your fingernails red

with what will gush from her busted face
if she ever says it again.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Come love, make me better than I was.
Come teach me a kinder way
to say my own name.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“I feel that sometimes when I’m writing poems—like they don’t yet fit. Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“The heartbeat is actually the sound made by the heart valves closing. If you, my love, ever hold a stethoscope to my chest, I will tell you to listen for the silence in between. What is and what will always be yours is the sound of my heart finally opening.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“There are few weapons more dangerous than our wounds, and, being wounded, there are things we all do that we would often rather die than face. But no one heals what they refuse to look at. So when asked if I think you’re a good person, I say, I don’t believe in good people. I believe in people who are committed to knowing their own wounds intimately.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Almost always they answer god or booze. One I don’t tolerate. The other, I’m told, doesn’t tolerate me.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“My mother used to knit my mittens too big so they’d still fit me when I grew. I wore them and looked like who I wasn’t yet. I feel that sometimes when I’m writing poems—like they don’t yet fit. Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“When they told me god was always watching I said, Who wants to worship a diary thief? I didn’t dare say who wants to worship anyone”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“White Feminism (noun):
1. A racism that claims
it is at least better
than no feminism at all,
like at least Hitler
was a vegetarian,
like we could actually
get comfortable
being the uneaten animal
in the lap of a man
making lampshades
out of human skin.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“My "yes" never fit into the "no" of this world.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“The closest I might ever come to war is the turning of my head. Apathy is intimate, like singing a lullaby to a grenade, then drinking yourself to sleep while it sneaks out the window to explode a boy.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“I know you take issue with me comparing Trump to Hitler. One, a failed painter who blamed the Jewish people for the beauty his heart was too ugly to make. The other, a con artist with enough failed humanity to eye our dying planet and focus on Miss America’s weight.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“Your life each time airport security screams, Pink or blue? Pink or blue? trying to figure out which machine setting to run you through. Choosing your life and how that made you into someone who now finds it easy to explain your gender by saying you are happiest on the road, when you’re not here or there, but in-between, that yellow line coming down the center of it all like a goddamn sunbeam.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

“ALL THE GOOD IN YOU When all the good in you starts arguing with all the bad in you about who you really are, never let the bad in you make the better case.”
― Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies