Leslie Jordan Quotes

Our parents did the best they could with the light they had to see with.

I think our dreams are what sustain us in hard times. Dreams are what keep us childlike. I love that they can grow and expand as we grow and expand.

Happiness is a choice. Happiness is a habit. And happiness is something you have to work hard at. It does not just happen.

My mind is like a bad neighborhood. Honey, you do not want to go up there alone.

I think that fear keeps so many of us from being successful at things outside our realm of experience. We love to stay in our comfort zone, but the growth only comes when we wander outside of that zone.

True happiness can only come from being of loving service to others, especially those in the last throes of life's journey.

Why is it that we love to drag all that baggage from childhood with us? We heave it dutifully. We haul it everywhere we go. And we pull it out at the drop of a hat for all to see. Nope, we are not going to let go of all that baggage.

I suppose someone had tossed the puppy out of the car, since we were in the middle of nowhere, too far out for a puppy to get to on her own. Who on Earth would do such a thing?! People like that need to burn in hell, I tell you that much.

Honey, we gotta be able to laugh at ourselves.

Honey, if embellishment were a sin, I would be sitting in a roaring fire with Beelzebub right now.

I was not the butchest little boy to come down the pike, that's for sure. But I was a joyful child. I was fun to be around. And I had learned to be really funny. I learned to be funny to keep the bullies at bay.

There is an old Southern expression: “I don’t got a dog in that fight.” But I immediately realized that was never going to be the case when it comes to standing up to racial injustice. We all “got a dog in that fight.

I'm more along the lines of a Dolly Parton. What you see is what you get!

I think the greatest gift my mother gave me was my love of reading.

But recovery is really about learning to live, one day at a time, without the use of anything that affects us from the neck up.

I don’t think little boys are raised right. We are raised to not show our fear. We are raised to be the protector, and not to be protected. The emotional landscape of most men is a minefield of fear and shame.

When our country was erupting in protests and marches, asking for the end of injustice against African American men and women, I was somewhat chastised by many of my followers for not speaking out against systemic racism. That was the first time it really occurred to me that I had a voice on this new platform. I had a strong voice. A voice that people wanted to hear...There is an old Southern expression: "I don't got a dog in that fight." But I immediately realized that was never going to be the case when it comes to standing up to racial injustice. We all "got a dog in that fight.

I just like things pretty. I think that's why homosexuals were put on this Earth: just to make things pretty.

I had won an Emmy Award back in 2006 for my portrayal of Beverley Leslie. When the show was rebooted for three brand-new seasons, I was so excited to be playing Beverley again.

In my travels over the years, I have always tried to read books by authors from the area I am visiting.

I was so lucky to have parents who fostered all my imaginary goings-on. I think it is what has made me a good writer and actor today. I am a superb pretender!

Now, please bear in mind. In 1958, my career Army Daddy scoured Chattanooga, Tennessee in a freak snowstorm to find his beloved 3-year old son a bride doll. Okay, full disclosure: I made up the snowstorm. I have no idea why I felt the need to add a snowstorm to embellish this story, when the story is a big deal on its own. A man's man like my daddy, hitting the toy stores looking for a bride doll for his son in 1958? No. snowstorm. needed.

Years ago, I had been told by Barbara Miller, the legendary casting director, that when I died, on my tombstone should read "Here lies the other way to go.

When I think of disabled literature and writing, I can think of a breadth of writing that spans decades and generations, that uses the D-word and does not. I think of Audre Lorde—Black Lesbian poet warrior mother, legally blind, living and dying with cancer, whose work shines with the knowledge she gained from living with bodily difference and fighting the medical industrial complex. I think of Gloria Anzaldúa, queer Latinx maestra who started her period at age three and lived with bodily and reprogenital differences, living and dying with diabetes. Some of my work as a disability justice writer has been to look at the legacies and work of those foundational second-wave queer and trans feminist writers and creators of color—Audre Lorde and June Jordan, Gloria Anzaldúa and Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, Chrystos and Sapphire, to name a few—and to witness the disability all up in their work, even if they did not use that word because of any number of factors including the whiteness of the disability rights movement of the time. June's last decade of writing was all about her cancer. Gloria's writing had everything to do with her diabetes and neurodivergence and life-long bodily differences. Marsha and Sylvia were both neurodivergent Trans Black and Latinx activists and creators whose writing, performance, and art was at the center of their lives and activism. Chrystos and Sapphire's Indigenous and Black feminist incest survivor stories and poetry write from spaces of surviving extreme trauma, chronic pain from stripping and cleaning houses, CPTSD, grief, and psychiatrization. "I also think of the deep legacy of disabled writers (some dead, some still living but having done this for a while) who intentionally, politically identified as disabled. Laura Hershey. Leroy Moore. Qwo-Li Driskill. Aurora Levins Morales. Billie Rain. Dani Montgomery. Nomy Lamm. Cheryl Marie Wade. Emi Koyama. Pat Parker. Tatiana de la tierra. Raymond Luczak. Anne Finger. Leslie Feinberg, who died of Lyme disease. Peggy Munson. Beth Brant. Vickie Sears. Writers who are small press, micro-press, self-published, indie press, out of print. Writers I know and cherish, whose names I call when I talk about disabled writing. We are so often kept apart, we disabled people, and kept from knowing each other's names. We are told not to hang out with the other kid with cerebral palsy, told to deny or downplay our disabilities or Deafness or ND. We often grow up not learning disabled history, Deaf literature, or that those are even a thing.