β
That is β your friend?"
"Philtatos," Achilles replied, sharply. Most beloved.
β
β
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
β
You had to be willing to fight in order for a love story to last a life time.
β
β
Kent Marrero (The Unsung Love Story (The River, #1))
β
You're every street I've ever walked. You're the tree outside my window, you're a sparrow as he flies. You're the book that I am reading. You're every poem I've ever loved.
β
β
Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante, #2))
β
Love is a wild fire that cannot be contained by any mere element known to man.
β
β
Kent Marrero (The Unsung Love Story (The River, #1))
β
I was diamond on the outside, and I would not break.
Inside, though, I was already broken.
β
β
Shaun David Hutchinson (We Are the Ants)
β
Together, in that room, our childhood notions of love melted away. We discovered love was not a fairytale. Sometimes there were no happy endings, and when there were, you needed to work like hell to keep the happiness alive.
β
β
Kent Marrero (The Unsung Love Story (The River, #1))
β
Do I really have to find a word for it? Can't it just be what it is?
β
β
David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy)
β
You look like a Turner painting and I want to learn your textures with my fingertips. You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I'd like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you.
β
β
Freya Marske (A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding, #1))
β
My brain is such a traitorous beast.
β
β
Christina Lauren (Autoboyography)
β
And we loved ourselves anyway.
β
β
Alice Oseman (Heartstopper: Volume Three (Heartstopper, #3))
β
For the first time in my life, I said the words, βI need a drink.
β
β
Kent Marrero (The Unsung Love Story (The River, #1))
β
If you love your country, you must be willing to defend it from fraud, bigotry, and recklessness--even from a president.
β
β
DaShanne Stokes
β
Yes,β Magnus said. βAbout that. I deeply appreciate you saving my life. Iβm very attached to my life. However, if it comes to a choice between your life and mine, Alec, remember I have already lived a very long time.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
β
I have done some of the best work of my life because of you. And I know you have done some of the best work of your life because of me. I donβt know a better way to explain what love means to two people like us.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
β
Grief is one big, gaping hole, isnβt it? Itβs everywhere and all consuming. Some days you think you canβt go on because the only thing waiting for you is more despair. Some days you donβt want to go on because itβs easier to give up than to get hurt again.
β
β
Marieke Nijkamp (This Is Where It Ends)
β
Love has no gender - compassion has no religion - character has no race.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
What do you say when The Girl tells you that you're The Girl to her?
β
β
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
β
His hand lay across my stomach as he slept soundly. I entwined my fingers with his and breathed through the warmth that seeped through my chest. Such a simple, sweet thing to do, yet holding hands in bed was incredibly intimate.
β
β
N.R. Walker (Spencer Cohen, Book Three (Spencer Cohen, #3))
β
You were the only one it could be.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
β
Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me-so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins.
β
β
Audre Lorde (Zami: A New Spelling of My Name)
β
Sheβs glad itβs Shara. Nobody else would have felt important enough.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
β
Magnus said, in a low voice, βAnd whatβs that one?β Alec answered, βStamina.β Magnus stared. βAre you serious?β Alec began to grin. βYeah.β βReally, though,β Magnus said. βI want to be clear on this. Youβre not just saying that to be sexy?β βNo,β Alec answered, his voice husky, and swallowed. βBut Iβm glad if it is.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
β
They should love you, just as you are. Parents should love their kids, right?"
"You'd think so.
β
β
N.R. Walker (Spencer Cohen, Book Three (Spencer Cohen, #3))
β
Love should never mean having to live in fear.
β
β
DaShanne Stokes
β
I am small.
So are stars from a distance. It's all a matter of perspective.
β
β
C. Kennedy (Slaying Isidore's Dragons)
β
The things that I love about you aren't going to go away when you go on your book tour, and they're not going to go away when you go on your mission. I'll still be here, and I'll still be thinking about all those things. I'll still be working on being a better person, a better friend, a better son. I'll still be wondering what it would be like to be a better boyfriend for you. And you will be on your mission, thinking about how much you wish your weren't gay.
β
β
Christina Lauren (Autoboyography)
β
Have you ever heard of a man marrying another man? A woman being in love with another woman? Of people who find their hearts lie somewhere in the middle or with neither?
β
β
Kalynn Bayron (Cinderella Is Dead)
β
He looks at me. His face is dotted with raindrops but I think there are tears too.
'I love her. I always have. You know that.'
'And me?'
And I known he means how I feel about him and me kissing him.
'You're my friend, Gabriel.'
'Do you kiss all your friends like that?' But he asks it without the harshness of his other questions. It's a real question.
'Just you.
β
β
Sally Green (Half Wild (The Half Bad Trilogy, #2))
β
I am a monster beneath him, with arching hips, an octopus with hands everywhere at once. I don't think anything in the history of time has felt this good.
β
β
Christina Lauren (Autoboyography)
β
It was as though each of them had discovered something unexpected but infinitely desirable. They were not yet sure of each other, but they wanted to be.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
β
Either you are homophobic or you are a human - you cannot be both.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
Being homosexual is no more abnormal than being lefthanded.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
Respectable Shadowhunters are not supposed to bring my sort home to meet Mom and Dad. I have a past. I have several pasts. Besides, good Shadowhunter boys arenβt meant to bring home boyfriends at all.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
β
Light bursts behind my closed eyes, so intensely I nearly hear the popping sound. It's my brain melting, or my world ending, or maybe we've just been hit by a meteor and this is the rapture and I'm given one last perfect moment before I'm sent to purgatory and he;s sent somewhere much, much better.
It isn't his first kiss - I know that - but it's his first real one.
β
β
Christina Lauren (Autoboyography)
β
And without my consent, with my defences in ruins, while my brain was sleeping, my stupid heart went and fell headfirst into love.
β
β
N.R. Walker (Spencer Cohen, Book Two (Spencer Cohen, #2))
β
And to the girl who kissed me,β she says, βI have done some of the best work of my life because of you. And I know you have done some of the best work of your life because of me. I donβt know a better way to explain what love means to two people like us.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
β
Too late, too late, your love gave me life. Here am I the creature you made through your loving; by your passion you created the thing that I am. Who are you to deny me the right to love? But for you I need never have known existence.
β
β
Radclyffe Hall (The Well of Loneliness)
β
What does love mean if we would deny it to others?
β
β
DaShanne Stokes
β
Existe una ley en algΓΊn lugar que dice que cuando una persona estΓ‘ totalmente enamorada de otra, es inevitable que la otra lo estΓ© tambiΓ©n. Amor ch'a null'amato amar perdona. .
β
β
AndrΓ© Aciman (Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1))
β
I am, and always have been - first, last, and always - a child of America.
You raised me. I grew up in the pastures and hills of Texas, but I had been to thirty-four states before I learned how to drive. When I caught the stomach flu in the fifth grade, my mother sent a note to school written on the back of a holiday memo from Vice President Biden. Sorry, sirβwe were in a rush, and it was the only paper she had on hand.
I spoke to you for the first time when I was eighteen, on the stage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, when I introduced my mother as the nominee for president. You cheered for me. I was young and full of hope, and you let me embody the American dream: that a boy who grew up speaking two languages, whose family was blended and beautiful and enduring, could make a home for himself in the White House.
You pinned the flag to my lapel and said, βWeβre rooting for you.β As I stand before you today, my hope is that I have not let you down.
Years ago, I met a prince. And though I didnβt realize it at the time, his country had raised him too.
The truth is, Henry and I have been together since the beginning of this year. The truth is, as many of you have read, we have both struggled every day with what this means for our families, our countries, and our futures. The truth is, we have both had to make compromises that cost us sleep at night in order to afford us enough time to share our relationship with the world on our own terms.
We were not afforded that liberty.
But the truth is, also, simply this: love is indomitable. America has always believed this. And so, I am not ashamed to stand here today where presidents have stood and say that I love him, the same as Jack loved Jackie, the same as Lyndon loved Lady Bird. Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it, whom the American people will βhold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: He is my choice.
Like countless other Americans, I was afraid to say this out loud because of what the consequences might be. To you, specifically, I say: I see you. I am one of you. As long as I have a place in this White House, so will you. I am the First Son of the United States, and Iβm bisexual. History will remember us.
If I can ask only one thing of the American people, itβs this: Please, do not let my actions influence your decision in November. The decision you will make this year is so much bigger than anything I could ever say or do, and it will determine the fate of this country for years to come. My mother, your president, is the warrior and the champion that each and every American deserves for four more years of growth, progress, and prosperity. Please, donβt let my actions send us backward. I ask the media not to focus on me or on Henry, but on the campaign, on policy, on the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans at stake in this election.
And finally, I hope America will remember that I am still the son you raised. My blood still runs from Lometa, Texas, and San Diego, California, and Mexico City. I still remember the sound of your voices from that stage in Philadelphia. I wake up every morning thinking of your hometowns, of the families Iβve met at rallies in Idaho and Oregon and South Carolina. I have never hoped to be anything other than what I was to you then, and what I am to you nowβthe First Son, yours in actions and words. And I hope when Inauguration Day comes again in January, I will continue to be.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
There is an artist my mother loved, Juan Gabriel, who was once asked in an interview if he was gay. His reply: What's understood need not be said. I remember how Mami's eyes fluttered to me like a bee on a flower acknowledging the pollen is sweet.
β
β
Elizabeth Acevedo (Clap When You Land)
β
Could it be that same sex mariage unions will be the catalyst for a marriage revolution?" S.DeWitt Hall Author/Advocate
β
β
Suzanne DeWitt Hall (Where True Love Is: An Affirming Devotional for LGBTQI+ Individuals and Their Allies)
β
The power of love is that it sees all people.
β
β
DaShanne Stokes
β
βand there weren't any words for what was happening, and even though words were important, they weren't everything. A lot of things happened outside the world of words.
β
β
Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante, #2))
β
That's not our story.' Mateo squeezes my hands. 'We're not dying because of love. We were going to die today, no matter what. You didn't just keep me alive, you made me live.
β
β
Adam Silvera (They Both Die at the End (Death-Cast, #1))
β
Sharaβs always been this person. βThis is what Iβve been trying to tell youβ, she wrote on a card stuck under an auditorium seat. Sharaβs not nice. Sharaβs so many more important things than nice.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
β
Compromise is often necessary [in politics], but entire marginalized identities are not expendable chess pieces.
β
β
Sarah McBride (Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality)
β
One can learn from what is not said.
β
β
C. Kennedy (Slaying Isidore's Dragons)
β
In the unification of two minds, orientation of sexuality is irrelevant.
β
β
Abhijit Naskar (Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality)
β
Alec kissed as he did all things, so dedicated and wholehearted he swept Magnus away.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
β
I glanced back to Yanni to see him smiling at us. "You two can stop being so cute now."
"Well, Spencer can," Andrew deadpanned. "I, unfortunately, am cute all the time."
I laughed. "It's true. He is.
β
β
N.R. Walker (Spencer Cohen, Book Three (Spencer Cohen, #3))
β
A conversation in which the two parties have different beliefs should never begin with the intention of converting the other party to your own beliefs. Every worthwhile conversation's goal should be to understand the other person's opinions and help them understand your own.
β
β
Emily Eskowich
β
Falling in love with another human is terrifying. As our language insists, romantic love is always preceded by a fall, the necessity of losing control and potentially hurting yourself in the process of connecting with another
β
β
Vivek Shraya (I'm Afraid of Men)
β
i can love
as Aristotle
who coined the term βphilΓaβ
loved his brothers
it isnβt that hard of a concept to grasp
but because i am not grasping someone else
you think there is something wrong with me
but i am fine
β
β
Courtney Carola (Have Some Pride: A Collection of LGBTQ+ Inspired Poetry)
β
There is no difference:
Love is love and love is love.
We are all the same.
β
β
Tyler Knott Gregson (All the Words Are Yours: Haiku on Love)
β
People think that LGBTs adopting children will hurt them, but it's not being in loving homes that hurts children most.
β
β
DaShanne Stokes
β
Same-sex marriage has not created problems for religious institutions; religious institutions have created problems for same-sex marriage.
β
β
DaShanne Stokes
β
Those who benefit from unearned privilege are too often quick to discount those who don't.
β
β
DaShanne Stokes
β
When I opened the door, Andrew was standing there like a remedy for heart palpitations. Or maybe he made them worse. It was hard to tell.
β
β
N.R. Walker (Spencer Cohen, Book One (Spencer Cohen, #1))
β
The women who love women wrote a song for the faggots. It was called, "Anything you do that the men don't like is o.k. by us.
β
β
Larry Mitchell (The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions)
β
ten reasons to love being queer
viii.
the people within our community are so supportive and so caring and so loving, most of the time towards people they donβt even know
and it is in moments like that when you realize that the queer community is more than a community
we are a family
β
β
Courtney Carola (Have Some Pride: A Collection of LGBTQ+ Inspired Poetry)
β
So please, for the love of gender- go bloom. Or water someone else while they do.
β
β
S. Bear Bergman (The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You)
β
Gay, straight, bi - labels, schmabels.
β
β
Olley White (Game On (Game On, #1))
β
I kissed him softly and left my lips pressed to his for a few beats of my heart.
β
β
N.R. Walker (Spencer Cohen, Book Two (Spencer Cohen, #2))
β
I think he won a tiny piece of my heart that day. If he didn't have the whole damn thing before then, he certainly had part of it now.
β
β
N.R. Walker (Spencer Cohen, Book Two (Spencer Cohen, #2))
β
Love does not work in convenience. Or any kind of sense.
β
β
Maggie Tokuda-Hall (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, #1))
β
They kissed slowly. Gently. Like they couldn't believe they were allowed to.
β
β
Meryl Wilsner (Something to Talk About)
β
There are things that donβt make sense about me. I donβt know if I belong here. How can that be possible, to feel estranged from a place where everyone loves you? To owe your life to a place and still want to run? Iβve been trying and trying to figure out what it is about me that makes me feel this way and why it feels so deep and so big that it must be most of me, the skin stretching between my knuckles and across my shoulders and then the bones under them too.
Knowing that I couldnβt have you if I wanted toβthat stings almost the same. Itβs almost the same feeling. Theyβre right beside each other. What do they have in common?
β
β
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
β
There are those from religious backgrounds who resist and oppose LGBT equality; some very obsessively and publicly. They make bold accusations and negative statements about gay and lesbian people, their supposed "lifestyle" and relationships. But when a son, daughter, brother, sister or close friend comes out it is no longer an "issue" it becomes a person. They realise everything they'd said was painfully targeted at someone they love. Then......everything changes.
β
β
Anthony Venn-Brown OAM (A Life of Unlearning - one man's journey to find the truth)
β
He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he'd rather be kissing boys. That's exactly what he said. I didn't know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and it I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it.
β
β
Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1))
β
When you hear of Gay Pride, remember, it was not born out of a need to celebrate being gay.
It evolved out of our need as human beings to break free of oppression and to exist without being criminalized, pathologized or persecuted.
Depending on a number of factors, particularly religion, freeing ourselves from gay shame and coming to self-love and acceptance, can not only be an agonising journey, it can take years.
Tragically some don't make it.
Instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride be grateful you have never needed one.
Celebrate with us.
β
β
Anthony Venn-Brown OAM (A Life of Unlearning - a journey to find the truth)
β
Genesis was not intended to offer a scientific explanation for how non-being was transformed into being, how nothingness exploded into galaxies. The point is to tell us God was in charge, he had us in mind from the start, and we are to value the great gift of his amazing creation, and of each other.
β
β
Suzanne DeWitt Hall (Where True Love Is: An Affirming Devotional for LGBTQI+ Individuals and Their Allies)
β
I believe that 'love' and 'wrong' are two deeply unrelated words that should never be thrown into the same sentence together. Like 'dessert' and 'broccoli.
β
β
Cat Winters (The Steep & Thorny Way)
β
Itβs tough enough to be a straight boy in a small town high school looking for the love of your life. But at least your possible loves are all out in the open.
β
β
JUVENALIUS
β
I want to love like my grandmother, who loved a woman like Joseph loved Mary. Someone so imperfect, so human, brave enough to love someone who already knows God.
β
β
R.Y.S. Perez (I Hope You Fall in Love: Poetry Collection)
β
Poor kid, thought Simon. Would I be in that hidden anguish were it not for Daniel?
β
β
Patrick C. Notchtree (The Clouds Still Hang (The Clouds Still Hang, #1-3))
β
The eyes! Cold and calculating, hard grey eyes, with the feel of a malevolent intelligence behind them.
β
β
Patrick C. Notchtree (The Clouds Still Hang (The Clouds Still Hang, #1-3))
β
If you are an LGBTQ+ individual, know that Jesus understands how you feel and cries for your pain. If you are not, remember that when you offer comfort and aid to one such as this, you offer it to Christ, himself.
β
β
Suzanne DeWitt Hall (Where True Love Is: An Affirming Devotional for LGBTQI+ Individuals and Their Allies)
β
It's stupid because I don't even know her, but sometimes you see someone and there's just this flicker. Like a light bulb that glows around the person, making them shine brighter than all the others. It's not that they're more attractive or smarter or funnier than anyone else. It's just they have a combination of all the things that speak directly to you.
β
β
Jaye Robin Brown (Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit)
β
Unless we filter all of our contemplation of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures through the person of Christ, the words are impenetrable. And as our first weekβs study informed us, the person of Jesus is love. We will revisit this truth throughout the entirety of this book, because it is the key to every argument you face about LGBTQ+ issues.
β
β
Suzanne DeWitt Hall (Where True Love Is: An Affirming Devotional for LGBTQI+ Individuals and Their Allies)
β
But then I met you,' he says.
β
β
Christina Lauren (Autoboyography)
β
When I say I love you, Ash, I don't mean that I love you in the way that I love Basquiat or oat milk lattes, I mean that I love you. All that you are and all that you will be and I can't wait to find out who that person is.
β
β
Tanya Byrne (Afterlove)
β
He knew I was gay for ages," he said, his voice soft. "We both did. Since we were, like, ten or eleven, maybe. As soon as we understood what gay was, we knew that's what I was. We... We used to kiss sometimes, when we were kids. When we were alone. Just little childish kisses, little pecks on the lips because we thought it was fun. We were always... really affectionate with each other. We'd cuddle and... we were kind to each other, rather than nasty like most children. I think we were so caught up in each other that we just... missed all the heteronormative propaganda that's thrust at you when you're that age. We didn't really realize it was weird until - yeah, until we were ten or eleven. But that didn't really stop us. I guess... I guess I always felt like it was more romantic than Aled did. Aled always just treated it like it was something that friends did rather than boyfriends. Aled... he's always been weird. He doesn't care what people think. He doesn't even, like, register the social norms... he's just caught up in his own little world.
β
β
Alice Oseman (Radio Silence)
β
In a paradoxical sense, once I accepted my position as different from the larger society as well as from any single-sub-society--black or gay--I felt I didn't have to try so hard. To be accepted. To look femme. To be straight. To look straight. To be proper. To look "nice". To be liked. To be loved. To be approved. What I didn't realize was how much harder I had to try merely to stay alive, or rather, to stay human. How much stronger a person I became in that trying.
β
β
Audre Lorde (Zami: A New Spelling of My Name)
β
Now is not the time for bigots and racists. No time for sexists and homophobes. Now, more than ever, is the time for ARTISTS. Itβs time for us to rise above and to create. To show humanity. To spread hope. We must prevent society from destroying itself, from losing its way. Now is the time for love.
β
β
Kamand Kojouri
β
The best way I can describe [being transgender] for myself [...] is a constant feeling of homesickness. An unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach that only goes away when I can be seen and affirmed in the gender I've always felt myself to be. And unlike homesickness with location, which eventually diminishes as you get used to the new home, this homesickness only grows with time and separation.
β
β
Sarah McBride (Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality)
β
I know weβve never properly met, so youβve got no reason to believe me, but I think youβre wrong about love. Love isnβt war. Life is the war; love is a truce you find in the middle of all that violence. And I bet thereβs someone out there who loves you, even if you donβt know them yet.
β
β
Shaun David Hutchinson (A Complicated Love Story Set in Space)
β
Being with girls is the sameβitβs shameless and gritty, itβs not as soft as people make it out to be. Itβs soft with men too. Even unknowingly, we diminish ourselves little by little to feel more loved. As girls, we donβt need to diminish ourselves when weβre together, we fit in every sense of the word. It doesnβt matter if weβre bruised, bloody, or empty, we become these things togetherβwe fit.
β
β
Amina Khan (Loathing You)
β
When Shara looks at her like that, all airy and sly, it makes Chloe think of the first time her mama brought home an icebox pie. It was strawberries and cream, her momβs favorite, and the whole thing seemed to be a feat of mechanical physics. It didnβt make sense how the strawberries held effortlessly together when you sliced it, or how the cloud of meringue sat weightless on top. She remembers studying the layers from the side and having the inexplicable thought, This is a Shara Wheeler kind of pretty.
God. Shall I compare thee to an icebox pie?
Couldnβt be gayer if she tried.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
β
The thing is,' Gwen said, muffled again against her dress, 'I think I could love a man. I just...haven't. I don't notice many people in that way. And if I could love a man, then surely I should try. It would make everything so much easier.'
'You could,' said Arthur. 'You could fall in love with a man, and know that you once liked Bridget, and neither of those things would change the other. They would both be true. But right now you do like Bridget. So I don't think you should settle for a life that denies that particular truth.
β
β
Lex Croucher (Gwen & Art Are Not in Love)
β
I want queer authors to write anything and everything they need to write. I have no interest in gatekeeping; I want the full spectrum. I want the coming out books. I want the books about queer suffering. I want on-page catharsis and exploration of trauma. I want the happy books, too: queer joy books, cute romantic comedies, first crush books, fantasies about queer royals and revolutionaries and spaceship captains. (...) We need all types of queer stories because all types of queer people exist. I want the market to be so saturated with queer books that anyone who needs to see themselves in a storyβanyone who hasnβt yet seen themselves, hasnβt yet gotten to be the heroβcan walk into any bookstore and find a book (or six) about someone who experiences the world like they do. I want every queer author to get the chance to tell their story. To tell people, We exist everywhere. We suffer, we survive, we love. We can be magic, too.
β
β
Nina Varela
β
I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold⦠These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier.
Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do β and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all thereβall through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war.
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Larry Kramer (The Normal Heart)
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But we were in love,
or at least I believed myself completely to be.
I craved [her] presence for no other reason than to have it.
It was certainly friendship too.
This intimate companionship
with someone who knew me in a way that no one else did.
It was a heighten state of friendship.
Maybe it was also a bit of infatuation.
But what I knew for sure was that it was also love.
Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation.
A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe.
And by gratitude.
And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness.
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Chinelo Okparanta (Under the Udala Trees)
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We walked into the forever white sand dunes, and soon we were far away from all the people in the world. Everyone had disappeared from the universe except the young man whose hand I was holding, and everything that had ever been born and everything that had ever died existed where his hand touched mine. Everything the blue of
the sky, the rain in the clouds, the white of the sand, the water in the oceans, all the languages of all the nations, and all the broken hearts that had learned to beat in their brokenness. We didn't talk. This was the quietest moment I had ever been in.
Even my busy brain--it was quiet. So quiet that I felt that I was in a church. And the thought entered my head that my love for Dante was holy, not because I was holy but because what I felt for him was pure.
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Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante, #2))
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AN INCOMPLETE LIST: THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HRH PRINCE HENRY OF WALES
1. The sound of your laugh when I piss you off.
2. The way you smell underneath your fancy cologne, like clean linens but somehow also fresh grass (what kind of magic is this?)
3. That thing you do where you stick out your chin to try to look tough.
4. How your hands look when you play piano.
5. All he things I understand about myself now because of you.
6. How you think Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars (wrong) because deep down you're a gigantic, sappy, embarrassing romantic who just wants the happily ever after.
7. Your ability to recite Keats.
8. Your ability to recite Bernadette's "Don't let it drag you down" monologue from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
9. How hard you try.
10. How hard you've always tried.
11. How determined you are to keep trying.
12. That when your shoulders cover mine, nothing else in the entire stupid world matters.
13. The goddamn issue of Le Monde you brought back to London with you and kept and have on your nightstand (yes, I saw it).
14. The way you look when you first wake up.
15. Your shoulder-to-waist ratio.
16. Your huge, generous, ridiculous, indestructible heart.
17. Your equally huge dick.
18. The face you just made when you read that last one.
19. The way you look when you first wake up (I know I already said this, but I really, really love it).
20. The fact that you loved me all along.
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Red, White & Royal Blue
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You can sit with us.
You can live beside us.
You can play your music.
You can listen to mine.
We can dance together.
We can share our food.
We can keep an eye on each other's kids.
We can teach each other new languages.
We can respect traditions.
We can build new ones.
You can ask for a cup of sugar.
You can ask for directions.
You can tell me when things are hard.
You can tell me when beautiful things happen.
We can listen to stories.
We can disagree.
We can agree.
We can come to understandings.
You can wear what you want.
You can pray as you feel compelled to.
You can love who you want.
You can sit with us.
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Elizabeth Tambascio
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Thank you," he said. Allison waved his thanks off with an airiness that didn't match her tense expression. "No, thank you. You just closed three outstanding bets and made me five hundred bucks," she said when Nathaniel glanced at her. "I'd rather find out exactly why and when you two hooked up than think about this awfulness any longer, so let's talk about that on the ride back instead." Aaron's gaze bounced from Allison to Nathaniel to Andrew. He was waiting for them to shoot her down, Nathaniel thought, and his expression went slack when neither one of them did. Nicky opened his mouth, then closed it again without a word and stared at Nathaniel. Kevin, surprisingly, didn't react at all.
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Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
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Boo-Boo Pennyroyal did not like her male and female slaves to mingle. In the operas that she adored, young people brought together in tragic circumstances were forever falling in love with each other and then throwing themselves off things (cliffs, mostly, but sometimes battlements, or rooftops, or the brinks of volcanoes). Boo-Boo was fond of her slaves, and it pained her to think of them plummeting in pairs off the edges of Cloud 9, so she nipped all tragic love affairs firmly in the bud by forbidding the girls and boys to speak to one another. Of course, young people being what they were, girls sometimes fell in love with other girls, or boys with boys, but that never happened in the operas, so Boo-Boo didn't notice.
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Philip Reeve (Infernal Devices (The Hungry City Chronicles, #3))
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See, the institutions and specialist, experts, you see. Yes, yes,
experts, indeed. See, they would have us believe that there is an order
to art. An explanation. Humans are odd creatures in that way. Always
searching for a formula. Yes, a formula to create an expected norm for
unexplainable greatness. A cook book you might say. Yes, a recipe
book for life, love, and art. However, my dear, let me tell you. Yes,
there is no such thing. Every individual is unique in their own design,
as intended by God himself. We classify, yes, always must we classify,
for if not, then we would be lost, yes lost now wouldn't we?
Classification, order, expectations, but alas, we forget. For what is art,
if not the out word expression of an artist. It is the soul of the artisan
and if his expectations are met, than who are we to judge whether his
work be art or not?
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Kent Marrero (The Unsung Love Story (The River, #1))
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Suicide. This is the exact opposite of last time, for this time I'm experiencing a kind of pleasure in life, in being alive, a pleasure in living that I've never experienced before, and I'm hopeful and confident that I can become someone with dignity. I know now why I couldn't change certain characteristics and certain things about myself, but it's not a problem anymore. Certain pathways I failed to open in the past have now opened. My whole self is radiating light. I see with clarity. I understand the cause and effect of the last year. What I had imagined I've now attained. It's as if I can see my life right in front of my eyes, and all I have to do is reach out and draw it in... Now I don't feel the acute pain I felt before; I feel enlightened, at peace. It's as if I've instantly found the secret of "Suffering", how to bear it and how to endure it... Yes, this time I've decided to kill myself not because I can't live with suffering and not because I don't enjoy being alive. I love life passionately, and my wish to die is a wish to live...
Yes, I've chosen suicide. The endpoint of this process of "Forgiveness". Not to punish anyone or to protest a wrong. I've chosen suicide with a clarity I've never possessed before, with a rational resolve and sense of calm, in order to pursue the ultimate meaning of my life, act on my belief about the beauty between two people... I take complete responsibility for my life, and even if my physical body disappears upon death, I don't believe my spirit will disappear. As long as I have loved people fully, then I can be content fading into "Nothingness". If I'm using death to express my passion for life, then I still don't love her enough, don't love life enough. and I will reincarnate in a different form to love her and to be part of her life... So the death of my flesh really doesn't mean anything. Doesn't solve anything.
Is this a tragedy? Will there be tragedy?
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Qiu Miaojin (Last Words from Montmartre)