Imogen Obviously Quotes

It's like there's this idea that you have to earn your label through suffering. And then you have to prove it with who you date, how you dress, how other people perceive you.

It feels bigger than I want it to be. Do I really have to announce this? Can't I just feel something and live inside it while it's happening and not analyze it to death?

Every breath she breathes feels like a love letter.

So which one of us is more queer?" "Well," I pause, "I'd have to see the two of you trying to sit in chairs.

How do I know it’s not a fluke? What if I only ever fall for one girl?” “Then you’re bi.” She pats my arm. “What if I’m talking myself into it?” “Not a thing—” “Okay, but what if the girl I like is kind of—I don’t know—boyish?” “Is she a boy?” Edith asks. “No.” “Sounds pretty bi.

It's a shift from a spiraling I hope I'm doing this right to the ache of I hope.

My head’s a shaken snow globe, glitter suspended in liquid.

Oh, Williamsburg. There was a point when you seemed like a scary, tough neighborhood, but now it's obvious that the graffiti on your walls gets put there by art students.

One's signed, one's my reading copy, and one's for emergencies

Maybe one day we’ll talk about it. Maybe I’ll find the words, and she’ll find a way to hear them. Then we’ll cry and hug and years will pass, and we’ll move past it. It’ll be just a little bump in our backstory. Or maybe for us, it ends here. Maybe Gretchen’s my backstory.

With girls, it was more like that feeling you get when you finish a book and your brain can’t quite shake it.

How weirdly does a person have to sit to count as bisexual?

Our eyes meet, and in my brain, it’s like daybreak.

I wouldn't call it a gut punch - more like a tiny, sharp poke beneath my rib cage. Other people's inside jokes always hit me like that, but I can never quite pin down the feeling. A variation of loneliness, maybe." -Imogen

Second of all, what’s the point of having a shed if you’re not going to use it to make out with girls?

Queerness recognizing queerness. It’s kind of beautiful when you think about it.

Ma'am, that is between you and your algorithm.

Queerness isn’t some distant hypothetical concept to me. It’s right there. It always has been.

Am I two lemon squares and a haircut away from making out with girls at a Clairo concert?

Tessa’s eyes catch mine, and her lips tug up at the corners, just barely. And the noise in my brain falls away. All the times I said I’m straight. All the times everyone’s said I’m straight. There it was, underlined and written in bold. How could I miss it? Like finding Waldo and realizing he was never really hiding.

Then she buries her face in the crook of my neck, and every breath she breathes feels like a love letter

Can you explain to me why you have three identical copies of One Last Stop." "I mean one’s signed, one’s my reading copy and one is for emergencies.

If you ever had something you wanted to tell me, I could make space for that, too.

The desire to make art begins early. Among the very young this is encouraged (or at least indulged as harmless) but the push toward a 'serious' education soon exacts a heavy toll on dreams and fantasies....Yet for some the desire persists, and sooner or later must be addressed. And with good reason: your desire to make art -- beautiful or meaningful or emotive art -- is integral to your sense of who you are. Life and Art, once entwined, can quickly become inseparable; at age ninety Frank Lloyd Wright was still designing, Imogen Cunningham still photographing, Stravinsky still composing, Picasso still painting. But if making art gives substance to your sense of self, the corresponding fear is that you're not up to the task -- that you can't do it, or can't do it well, or can't do it again; or that you're not a real artist, or not a good artist, or have no talent, or have nothing to say. The line between the artist and his/her work is a fine one at best, and for the artist it feels (quite naturally) like there is no such line. Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be. For many people, that alone is enough to prevent their ever getting started at all -- and for those who do, trouble isn't long in coming. Doubts, in fact, soon rise in swarms: "I am not an artist -- I am a phony. I have nothing worth saying. I'm not sure what I'm doing. Other people are better than I am. I'm only a [student/physicist/mother/whatever]. I've never had a real exhibit. No one understands my work. No one likes my work. I'm no good. Yet viewed objectively, these fears obviously have less to do with art than they do with the artist. And even less to do with the individual artworks. After all, in making art you bring your highest skills to bear upon the materials and ideas you most care about. Art is a high calling -- fears are coincidental. Coincidental, sneaky and disruptive, we might add, disguising themselves variously as laziness, resistance to deadlines, irritation with materials or surroundings, distraction over the achievements of others -- indeed anything that keeps you from giving your work your best shot. What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit. Each step in the artmaking process puts that issue to the test.

If I were queer, wouldn’t I at least sort of know? It’s my own brain. I have open access to it. No one’s redacting parts of the story. Especially not something as fundamental as who I’m attracted to. And I know denial exists. But this isn’t denial. Denial’s a curtain with a clear truth behind it.

It's a shift from a spiraling I hope I'm doing this right to the ache of I hope

Denial’s a curtain with a clear truth behind it.

She coaxes us in for a big group fist bump—and I get this happy jolt in my chest when our hands come together.

It’s an annoying, predictable cliché, but Maria always sympathizes with the monster. If you had a conversation with her about it, though, and you implied that there were very obvious reasons, she would flip out on you. This is not the type of insight in which she is interested.

1987: the world’s biggest pancake ever (well, at the time). My parents actually got to eat part of it!” She sits up suddenly. “You’re descended from pancake royalty?” “I mean, yeah,” I say, “but deep down I’m just a normal girl. You don’t have to treat me differently in pancake situations.

So it's actually way easier just to humor these men who grew up watching movies where the girl doesn't like the hero until he's been persistent enough to make her like him. This is the grease that keeps the gears of the heteronormativity machine spinning, obviously, but it's just easier to slip out of an awkward situation with an awkward guy than it is to call out the misogyny inherent in what he's doing. It's a tough spot to be in, but also this is coming from an angry dyke who's also trans and who, at one point, had society try to use her as a vessel for that kinda of misogyny.

There are these Precious Moments figurines, they’re like porcelain, little kids with giant eyes handing each other a heart that says LOVE on it, or rolling around with a puppy? Maria stumbles into a whole aisle of them. Tears start welling up in her eyes, again, which is totally not tough and totally not punk but which also you totally can’t lie about. Like, they’re depictions of this idealized childhood innocence, right? This idea that little kids have the potential for sadness in their giant eyes, but really they just know these pure emotions: love, happiness, whatever. It’s totally hokey and stupid and obviously a construction. Real little kids are as dirty, impure, and complicated as the adults they’re going to grow up and be. But this sort of thing gets her all melodramatic and choked up specifically because of how fucked up she was convinced she was when she was little. She didn’t know she was trans, she couldn’t put into words that she was a little girl, but she did know that something was horribly wrong and she blamed herself for it. Other kids could stomp around and punch eachother and sleep at night, but she was this self-conscious mess who liked books a lot because sometimes people in books seemed as bewildered by the world and themselves as she was. She was never a little kid who could get a puppy and be happy about it. If you’d given her a puppy, she would immediately have started worrying about what if she trained it wrong, what if it ran away. She would already be sad that it would die.

I just wanted to say how much i loved last night… How much I liked last night… Just wanted to say last night was really fun… Hi. we made out last night and then I disappeared and then you disappeared and now I’m going home and I know you don’t want to be official girlfriends or anything, obviously, LOL, but I just want you to know I really liked it. More than liked it. Unless you disagree, in which case I liked it just enough that you should feel good about your kissing abilities, but not enough that you should feel any pressure, okay? And maybe you can respond with an emoji, or something, just to give me a clue where you stand.

What is a novel, anyway? Only a very foolish person would attempt to give a definitive answer to that, beyond stating the more or less obvious facts that it is a literary narrative of some length which purports, on the reverse of the title page, not to be true, but seeks nevertheless to convince its readers that it is. It's typical of the cynicism of our age that, if you write a novel, everyone assumes it's about real people, thinly disguised; but if you write an autobiography everyone assumes you're lying your head off. Part of this is right, because every artist is, among other things, a con-artist. We con-artists do tell the truth, in a way; but, as Emily Dickenson said, we tell it slant. By indirection we find direction out -- so here, for easy reference, is an elimination-dance list of what novels are not. -- Novels are not sociological textbooks, although they may contain social comment and criticism. -- Novels are not political tracts, although "politics" -- in the sense of human power structures -- is inevitably one of their subjects. But if the author's main design on us is to convert us to something -- - whether that something be Christianity, capitalism, a belief in marriage as the only answer to a maiden's prayer, or feminism, we are likely to sniff it out, and to rebel. As Andre Gide once remarked, "It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written." -- Novels are not how-to books; they will not show you how to conduct a successful life, although some of them may be read this way. Is Pride and Prejudice about how a sensible middle-class nineteenth-century woman can snare an appropriate man with a good income, which is the best she can hope for out of life, given the limitations of her situation? Partly. But not completely. -- Novels are not, primarily, moral tracts. Their characters are not all models of good behaviour -- or, if they are, we probably won't read them. But they are linked with notions of morality, because they are about human beings and human beings divide behaviour into good and bad. The characters judge each other, and the reader judges the characters. However, the success of a novel does not depend on a Not Guilty verdict from the reader. As Keats said, Shakespeare took as much delight in creating Iago -- that arch-villain -- as he did in creating the virtuous Imogen. I would say probably more, and the proof of it is that I'd bet you're more likely to know which play Iago is in. -- But although a novel is not a political tract, a how-to-book, a sociology textbook or a pattern of correct morality, it is also not merely a piece of Art for Art's Sake, divorced from real life. It cannot do without a conception of form and a structure, true, but its roots are in the mud; its flowers, if any, come out of the rawness of its raw materials. -- In short, novels are ambiguous and multi-faceted, not because they're perverse, but because they attempt to grapple with what was once referred to as the human condition, and they do so using a medium which is notoriously slippery -- namely, language itself.

it’s actually way easier just to humor these men who grew up watching movies where the girl doesn’t like the hero until he’s been persistent enough to make her like him. This is the grease that keeps the gears of the heteronormativity machine spinning, obviously, but it’s just easier to slip out of an awkward situation with an awkward guy than it is to call out the misogyny inherent in what he’s doing. It’s a tough spot to be in, but also, this is coming from an angry dyke who’s also trans and who, at one point, had society try to use her as a vessel for that kind of misogyny.

There are these Precious Moments figurines, they’re like porcelain, little kids with giant eyes handing each other a heart that says LOVE on it, or rolling around with a puppy? Maria stumbles into a whole aisle of them. Tears start welling up in her eyes, again, which is totally not tough and totally not punk but which also you totally can’t lie about. Like, they’re depictions of this idealized childhood innocence, right? This idea that little kids have the potential for sadness in their giant eyes, but really they just know these pure emotions: love, happiness, whatever. It’s totally hokey and stupid and obviously a construction. Real little kids are as dirty, impure, and complicated as the adults they’re going to grow up and be.

I can’t believe you did that?’ Sofie shot at him. ‘What was I supposed to do? You saw those two had guns. If I hadn’t they’d have shoved me in the back too.’ ‘Or shot you,’ Sofie said in a quiet voice. ‘No, I don’t think they would’ve done that. Just threatened me. They’d already got who they wanted this time.’ ‘Did you know that couple?’ Sofie looked up at him and tried to blink away the tears that filled her eyes. ‘By sight. They never go out much because he can’t walk far. I sometimes see her going to the village with her shopping bag.’ ‘Why them?’ Sofie wondered, innocently. ‘It’s obvious. They’re Jews. That’s why you’ve got to watch out.’ ‘But what use are they to the Germans? They’re hardly able to work in those camps are they?’ She glanced at Oscar, who was staring straight ahead as they resumed their walk to school. ‘I don’t know, Sofie. I wish I did.’ His comment chilled her. Perhaps her Oscar didn’t have all the answers after all. He put an arm round her waist, but still didn’t look at her. She leant into him, grateful for his warmth, even though the morning sunshine was beating down on them.

a gardener who came twice a week to mow the lawn and ‘do the heavy work’. Imogen wasn’t sure what ‘the heavy work’ meant, but it was obviously useful.

And what is the obvious thing you need to state, Major Ferris?” Xaden asks, his tone completely, utterly bored. “It’s an Assembly meeting,” Bodhi whispers to me. “Only a quorum of five is required to call a vote, since all seven are almost never here at one time, and four votes carry a motion.” I file that information away. “Are we allowed to listen?” “Meetings are open to whoever wants to attend,” Imogen replies just as quietly. “And we’re attending…in the hallway?” I ask. “Yes,” Imogen answers with no other explanation. “Returning is the only option,” Hawk Nose continues. “Not doing so risks everything we’re building here. Search patrols will come, and we don’t have enough riders—

What starts with F and ends in u-c-k? A firetruck!

The thing is, Gretchen's not even doing anything wrong. It's just this dynamic that's always kind of been there with us. Basically, there's a version of me who lives in Gretchen's head, and as long as I stay within a certain radius of that, we're fine. But when I veer too far off course-I start to feel kind of hazy sometimes. Maybe I'm more liquid than most people are. I always seem to take the shape of my container. Usually, it's a sort of relief, letting Gretchen remold me.