Quotes About Self-expression

If being sane is thinking there's something wrong with being different....I'd rather be completely fucking mental.

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I'm not frightened by anyone's perception of me.

People say that you're going the wrong way when it's simply a way of your own.

I always play women I would date.

I don't take good pictures 'cause I have the kind of beauty that moves.

We have to be able to criticize what we love, say what we have to say. Cause if you're not trying to make something better then as far as I can tell you are just in the way.

She didn't want to be an out-and-out character any more than she wanted to be one of the herd, so Beth beat herself a path between the two.

Because she was raw and uncertain, and she liked to keep all the messy parts of herself to herself. ... As much as Lena liked to hide the mess and display the finished product, by this point she was all mess and no product.

She was never going to be the kind of person who didn't stick out in all directions. To want it was the same as hating herself. That was the truth. She breathed those words. She could have repeated them a hundred times and they wouldn't have hurt any worse. Reality was stubborn for sure, but it was large and it had possibilities. It was a sweet relief when you let it come.

Did you do something crazy, like cut it all off?" "Well," I said, "not all." "But it's real short, right?" "Yeah, but —" "Why did you do it?

After standing in front of the closet for so long that Vanessa made a pig face at me while she chose her clothes, I finally decided on my red jumper that said Mallory across the front, a short-sleeved white blouse, and white tights with little hearts all over them. You look like a valentine, Vanessa told me, but I didn't care.

Becca and Danielle looked at each other joyously. What a pair they made: Becca, dark-skinned, shorter and chunkier than Danielle, wearing a flashy pair of jams, her thick hair arranged in ponytails; and Danielle, still pale, with the shape of a bean pole, wearing droopy jeans and her even droopier BALD IS BEAUTIFUL T-shirt, a blue-and-green scarf not really hiding her almost bald head.

The next morning I got up, pulled on a pair of blue tights, black canvas walking shorts, a long-sleeved, blue T-shirt, and a pair of black flats. I piled my blonde perm up on top of my head and fastened it with a blue stretchie tie.

short red pants with purple suspenders over a bright yellow and black sweat shirt. On my feet I put my purple push-down socks and a pair of red hightop sneakers. I added jewelry — a big necklace with wooden bananas and oranges strung on it, and dangly earrings shaped like sunglasses. I fixed my hair. I brushed it until it was full and shiny. Then I rolled up a red scarf and tied it in my hair

Dawn has two holes pierced in each ear. (Mary Anne and I will never get our ears pierced.) The

and my earlobes have not been stabbed (er, pierced).

Vulnerability comes in pretending to be someone you are not.

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Life will work its magic if you let go of fear and live your life as an exclamation and not as an explanation.

We need to tell each other stories of different ways you can live, different ways you can be; predicated not on how close you get to the life you were assumed or expected to have, but on the queer wanderings of a life you live.

I was profoundly shy growing up, and my sense of human sociality was of something from which I was barred: almost like a room with a locked door for which I did not have the key. Perhaps that was it: gender seemed like a key to a lock, which I did not have, or which I did not fit. Looking back, I think I decided to self-girl when I went to university, as I was exhausted by not fitting or not fitting in.

Here is a secret good thing: Sometimes I like journal writing at school because I can remind myself of things I might forget when I'm a grown-up. Like that I plan to smoke cigars. And I do not plan to get married. Cigars, yes; husband, no. What if I forget these things?

They wanted to be different, but there was no one to show them how.

Good luck. Be safe. And if you can't be safe... be yourself.