Quotes from Nancy Garden

I write for young people because I like them and because I think they are important. Children's books can be mind-stretchers and imagination-ticklers and builders of good taste in a way that adult books cannot, because young people usually come to books with more open minds. It's exciting to be able to contribute to that in a small way.

My writing books with positive gay characters has come more out of anger than anything else: anger at not having been able to find honest, accurate books about people like myself as a teen, books that show we're as diverse as straight people and that we can lead happy, healthy, productive lives just as straight people can.

Ugh! Young girls, they should laugh. Life's bad enough when you're grown, you might as well laugh when you're young.

The thing about mountains is that you have to keep on climbing them, and that it's always hard, but there's a view from top every time when you finally get there.

Don't punish yourselves for people's ignorant reactions to what we all are. Don't let ignorance win. Let love.

Don't let ignorance win. Let love.

My coming out, like most people's, was and is a gradual process - for no matter how out one is, there are always situations when one's with people who don't know, and one has the choice or, sometimes, the necessity of coming out to them.

It's Annie and me they're all sitting around here like cardboard people judging; It's Annie and me. And what we did that they think is wrong, when you pare it all down, was fall in love.

We were what seemed important then, not some label.

I think kids in every minority need to see people like themselves in books; that's an acknowledgment of their existence on this planet and in this society.

When I was growing up as a young lesbian in the '50s, I looked in vain for books about my people. I did find some paperbacks with lurid covers in the local bus station, but they ended with the gay character's committing suicide, dying in a car crash, being sent to a mental hospital, or 'turning' heterosexual.

Oh," she said, putting her hand to her throat -- it was a suprisingly long, slender hand, in contrast to the roundness of her face.

It's Annie and me they're all sitting around here like cardboard people judging; it's Annie and me. And what we did that they think is wrong, when you pare it all down, was fall in love.

Para alguien con alma de jardinero, los jardines son especiales, más que una casa.

Lo importante es lo maravilloso que fue sentirla tan cerca, y la certeza insoportable y definitiva de que somos dos personas en lugar de una. Pero también es saber lo maravilloso que es eso: que, a pesar de ser dos personas distintas, casi podemos ser una sola persona, y al mismo tiempo deleitarnos en la singularidad de la otra

Es terrible que estuviéramos tan asustadas de que nos vieran con libros que tenemos todo el derecho a leer

No sería sincero ni correcto, sería negar… todo lo que sentimos la una por la otra. Ellas son mayores, tal vez tuvieran que hacerlo, pero… Ay, Liza, yo no quiero esconder la… la mejor parte de mi vida, de mí misma.

No podemos encerrarnos en un armario como estos libros, pero eso es lo que va a pasar cuando volvamos a clase.

Liza, me gustaría fugarme contigo, que nos casáramos por ahí, maldita sea.

Liza, Liza, no hay nada seguro, pero… yo estoy todo lo segura que puede estar una persona. Quiero abrazarte siempre, quiero estar contigo para siempre, quiero… Quiero incluso que algún día seamos una pareja de viejecitas ya sin pasión ni nada. Que nos sentemos en mecedoras y nos riamos de lo pegajosas que éramos de jóvenes, al sol en algún porche…

Y nos meceremos una y otra vez, adelante y atrás, y te acuerdas de cuando éramos crías y le estábamos cuidando la casa a tus profesoras y resultó que eran lesbianas, y lo tensas que estábamos porque sabíamos que tendríamos que pasar los siguientes cuatro años en universidades distintas, empezando por aquel mismo verano, porque yo me iba a un estúpido campamento…

It'll be okay. There are a lot of unfair things in this world, and gay people certainly come in for their share of them—but so do lots of other people, and besides, it doesn't really matter. What matters is the truth of loving, of two people finding each other. That's what's important, and don't you forget it.

Te quiero. ¿Podrás al menos tenerlo presente?

Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins?