Quotes About Identity

GOE, little booke: thy selfe present, As child whose parent is unkent, To him that is the president Of noblesse and of chevalree:

I knew I was worthless and at the same time I was convinced somebody would find me worthy, would worship me for this sexual allure so foreign to my understanding yet so central to my being.

Later I would know some real workers—heavily tattooed, hair worn in ponytails, motorcycle-riding, manga-reading, and pill-popping—and I realized they were as batty as we were, far from the standardized robots of our fantasies. Americans, rich or poor, were a nation of weirdos.

The best explanation of masochism, the appeal of masochism, is that it accepts shame; the sickening shame one must swallow and hide is at last accepted, employed, even loved—the shame about a mutilation, hairiness, too much or not enough fat, the shame about wanting to serve, to be a dog, son, wife, slave, horse, prisoner.

Then I caught myself foolishly imagining that gays might someday constitute a community rather than a diagnosis.

I was three people: the boy who smelled bad when I was with my sister; the boy who was wise and kind beyond his years when I was with my mother; but when I was alone not a boy at all but a principle of power, of absolute power.

So," he said. "What's the difference between me and a whore?" He swallowed. "Am I a whore?" "No more than every married woman.

Once I accepted my extravagant mendicancy I stumbled upon the sober, intelligent little boy I had once been. This was the kid with the sweet smile and an interest in all sorts of things, the boy with brushed hair and cloudless eyes, the child so whole he could forget himself: the birthday boy.

It was men, not women, who struck me as foreign and desirable and I disguised myself as a child or a man or whatever was necessary in order to enter their hushed, hieratic company, my disguise so perfect I never stopped to question my identity. Nor did I want to study the face beneath my mask, lest it turn out to have the pursed lips, dead pallor and shaped eyebrows by which one can always recognize the Homosexual.

Real men don't moisturise.

I'd been waiting and waiting year after year to grow up so I could lead the gay life, and all the while I'd been wasting my most precious capital, my youth.

I'm not much to look at, replied Elizabeth, but I'm beautiful inside.

You're a right-looking eejit

My friends I tell you this, we are a jolly group but put us in uniform and all that change. In war I don't know who my brother. In war I don't know who my friend. War make everybody savage. Who can say what lies inside the heart of each one of us when everything is taken away.

I could feel she was angry with me because of my gawkiness, because of my accent and my oilskin bag, bound with twine. She talked to herself, mumbled, as the train rumbled along. Then all of a sudden her mood changed and she kissed me and hugged me and said my mother and her mother were first cousins and that meant that she and I were second cousins and would be buddies.

I had clung to the fable of the Steppenwolf, believing that his redemption would also become mine.

There was a cry that must have been mine

Dilly, do not ever forget your own people." My brother came with me to wait for the mail car. He took off his brown scapulars and gave them to me, it being his way of saying goodbye. "In your letters, better not mention politics," he said. He had a secret life from us, he was a Croppy Boy, so many young men were, but dared not speak of it for fear of informers.

If I could feel like myself I'd thank God but I don't feel and never will.

I don't know what this great weight of hair is for. Our Lady would hardly approve it," she said as she passed on to the next girl.

motherless mothers with their skinless mysteries.

Me temo, cariño —me dijo ella—, que ya no tienes edad para ser un maricón de los de antes.

Ay que ver qué Hola y qué Zara Home os estáis volviendo los maricones. Digo, los gays.

A San Pablo, como era machito, la iluminación le llegó mientras galopaba camino de Damasco; yo la tuve mientras me desmaquillaba.