Greta & Valdin Quotes

“This book is for hot autistic people, people from the city, people who have been mistaken for a different ethnicity, queer and trans people who are tired of being strong and just want to do jokes, tall girls, and haters.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“Having OCD is so stupid. I wish I had something cool, like double joints or purple eyes. I feel as if the pathways in other people's brains are like well-maintained Department of Conservation hiking trails, while mine are modelled on the dodgiest slides at Waiwera Thermal Resort after it was shut down.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I have a strong interest in urban planning because I used to live in Germany.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I wonder what plant I would be, if I were a plant. Maybe something with big leaves that droop sulkily if not provided with the exact right amount of water and light.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“People always assume I’m bi.’
‘Why? No one ever assumes I’m bi. Oh, no, Greta.’
‘What?’ She turns to look at me. We haven’t been looking at each other at all during this exchange, just up at the ceiling, like a therapy session. I’m the worst, dodgiest therapist, lying in my bed and not letting my clients turn the lights on.
‘It’s because of sexism, isn’t it.’
‘Yeah, it’s just very hard to convince anyone that wanting to look pretty doesn’t mean you want attention from men. And then people say it to me so much I think I am bi, and I go out with straight guys and feel like I’m suffocating.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I think that's an issue with queer society. People still have trouble accepting anyone who isn't already in or aspiring to be in a same-sex relationship as a part of the community. Being queer is . . . it's in yourself, it doesn't always have to do with other people.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“Being gay used to be fun. And illegal and dangerous. Now it's just about being romantic and sad.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“What if he’s one of those guys who wants to know where you are all the time? What if he runs a meme page and I don’t think it’s funny?”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“She has a very good voice. It reminded me of one of those races where you roll cheese down a hill, but if all the cheese had melted and it was running into my ears.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“i don't always love to think about all the tiny pieces of me that add up to make a whole person. i feel concerned that too many of the pieces have something a bit wrong with them.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I'm not a human jukebox," I say, even though I am.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I miss you, too. Now go and live your free life and feel indebted to me for every moment of it.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I don’t know. I wanted to watch Cocktail.” “You thought I might have a DVD of the movie Cocktail, the film about Tom Cruise working as a bartender to pay his way through business school?” “Oh. No, that’s not right. Maybe it’s called Cocktail Bar.” “What happens in it?” “Robin Williams owns a drag bar in Miami.” “That’s The Birdcage.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“Sometimes I think I can regain control by doing everything right, but the things I think I need to do don’t make any sense. It’s like being extremely superstitious but also hating yourself.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I was so deep inside how bad I felt that I wasn’t able to articulate what the problem was to anyone, not even to myself.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“How much does love really matter in this economy?”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“it's strange for me to think that people can know about me without me having met them. to remember me when I'm not there. to know i exist when im not standing infront of them. it seems even more strange for someone to want me to be with them when I'm not. and the most strange for someone to need me, to depend on me, to love me.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I'm not very good at telling people how I feel. I don't know why I'm like that, and I don't always love to think about all the tiny pieces of me that add up to make a whole person. I feel concerned that too many of the pieces have something a but wrong with them, like a puzzle you get at an op shop on holiday when it's raining.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“It's offensive that they don't make pore strips big enough for my nose. It's anti-Semitic.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I don't think it should be allowed for anyone to remember me as I was before maybe, like, two years ago. For their sake. Lovely Ben should not have to remember me as a teen Eurovision fanatic who threw out the batteries for the remote so no one could even try to change the channel, and then screamed because I couldn't turn the volume up. These days I'm much more dignified.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“... I was really rude. Except one time I made a great joke about Bismarck and she laughed, and I laughed, and it was like we were in our own private world. We weren't, though, we were in one of her boyfriends' cars, and he wasn't happy about it." "Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian Chancellor of the German Empire?" "Yes, he created the first welfare state in modern history. The joke wasn't to do with that, though, it was something to do with the Crimean War and cry me a river.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“Valdin, he's a real person! Rumbo is a real person! I am not making it up, I am not embellishing the story for dramatic effect, Rumbo was a very violent chlid who once hit the teacher with a hockey stick and fought off a wolf with a burning branch and started a forest fire, and he was my best friend!”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“There's a picture of a clown pinned on the wall with the caption: hello Papa Linsh, are you afraid of clowns? I'm not. By Freya, age 6.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I think about making a big sparkly poster about my thesis, with Mikhail Gorbachev's face made out of rhinestones and glitter.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“I yearned to learn French, though. I wanted to wear a beret and meet a mysterious man late at night in a Parisian park. My ideas of what was sexy and what happened under the cover of darkness due to conditions of homophonic oppression hadn't been fully developed at that stage.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“Cool. Hot? Nice,” I say, like I’m advertising ice blocks.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“It’s strange for me to think that people can know about me without me having met them, to remember me when I’m not there, to know I exist when I’m not standing in front of them. It seems even more strange for someone to want me to be with them when I’m not, and the most strange for someone to need me, to depend on me, to love me.”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“A nurse! Nurses are the heroes of our society!”
― Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin

“Sometimes I think I can regain control by doing everything right, but the things I think I need to do don't make any sense.”
― Rebecca K Reilly, Greta & Valdin: A Novel

“I don't like reading about pain and trauma, I have the Al Jazeera app for that".”
― Rebecca K Reilly, Greta & Valdin