Sapphic Quotes

She’s never liked us much, not since she complained that there were no boys on the island, and Reese gave her the blankest look I’ve ever seen and said, “Plenty of girls, though.

I have never been in love with no one, and never shall," she whispered, "unless it should be with you.

She’s inching forward. Is there a heterosexual explanation for why she’s inching forward?

I fell in love with you the day that I met you, and then I fell in love with the person you remembered you are. I got to fall in love with you twice. That’s— that’s magic. You’re the first thing I’ve believed in since— since I don’t even remember, okay, you’re— you’re movies and destiny and every stupid, impossible thing, and it’s not because of the fucking train, it’s because of you. It’s because you fight and you care and you’re always kind but never easy, and you won’t let anything take that away from you. You’re my hero, Jane. I don’t care if you think you’re not one. You are.

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 don’t know a better way to explain what love means to two people like us.

I don’t believe doing something in front of everybody makes it more meaningful, anyway. If anything, it makes it stop belonging to you.

Evelyn, who was the love of your life? You can tell me." Evelyn looks out the window, breaths in deeply, and then says, "Celia. St. James".

Tell me what you want,” she said, “and I will make it happen.” I want my liar, I thought. I want her mouth. I want her perfume to rub off on my skin like bruised grass.

You were the only one it could be.

She’s glad it’s Shara. Nobody else would have felt important enough.

I have been married seven times, and never once has it felt half as right as this. I think that loving you has been the truest thing about me

It’s like that, with all of us here. Sick, strange, and we don’t know why. Things bursting out of us, bits missing and pieces sloughing off, and then we harden and smooth over.

I wanted to say, I would rather have you for a little time than no time at all. I will remember you perfectly. My memory will touch your skin, your lips. The memory will hurt, but it will be mine.

What do you want? I want to stop living in fear. I want to stop coming up with excuses about why I'm not interested in dating. I want my family to know me. I want to get to learn more about Lisa. I want to stop feeling like everything I am is inadequate or makes me unworthy of love because of something I can't help.

Byatt’s carved her initials over and over. BW. BW. BW. She does that everywhere. On the bunk, on her desk in every class we had, on the trees in the grove by the water. Marking Raxter as hers, and sometimes I think if she asked, I’d let her do the same to me.

We are literally made of stardust." Moonlight danced off the tips of Elle's pale blond eyelashes and made her eyes twinkle. If anyone was made of star stuff, it was her.

If I seem confident, it’s because I have to. You, of all people, know what I mean.

I know how I feel and I'm five hundred percent certain that on a scale of one to ten, I want to be with you, exactly as you are, infinity.

I told you once I’m not a book to be read,” Ayla continued. “I take it back. I’m a book. Read me.

Through her eyes, I was able to experience the story for the first time all over again.

This girl who was soft at heart, who was both the vast, dark woods and the glorious light of a full moon, who was angry at all the thousand tiny ways she’d been hurt in her life.

Let us look again for a moment; it is the last time, perhaps, I shall see the moonlight with you.

Jealousy is a funny thing. We spend so much of high school consumed by it, hating that another person has something we don’t, wishing we could taste what it’s like to be them.

The first time I let myself fall, it wasn’t hot at all. It was cold. January. There was ice on the sidewalks— at least, that’s what I’d heard. But this girl felt like nectarines and balconies to me. She felt like everything. She felt like a long winter, then a nervous spring, then a sticky summer, and then those last days you never thought you’d get to, the ones that spread themselves out, out, out until they feel like they go on forever. So, August is a person.

And to the girl who kissed me,’ she says, ‘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 don’t know a better way to explain what love means to two people like us.

Because when you’re near me, I smell lavender on your hair. When you smile, I catch a taste of honey. Your skin is warm against mine, and when you touch me, I feel more than magic.

Her words came in a sudden rush. “You’re hard to look away from. I can’t look away from you. I don’t know how anyone could.

We weren't made to be alone. We were made to love. And when we love, we automatically know God without trying to, because God is love. If we love as he made us to love—if we love with our hearts instead of our criteria—then we simply are love.

Shara’s always been this person. ‘This is what I’ve been trying to tell you’, she wrote on a card stuck under an auditorium seat. Shara’s not nice. Shara’s so many more important things than nice.

Hate like that—when it's disguised as love, or righteousness or pity—I'm not going to subject you to hate like that.

The whole world can rot.' Eris whispers. 'Let's just sit here and watch it happen.

I could hate you, but it would kill me, and that is not how I am dying for you.

She was so much like me that it often felt like talking to myself. There was a unique kind of comfort in that.

She wanted all of Elle—the good, the bad, the messy.

You’re… you’re something else, Arlo Jarsdel. But you’re also weird as fuck.

There are things that don’t make sense about me. I don’t 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? I’ve 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 couldn’t have you if I wanted to—that stings almost the same. It’s almost the same feeling. They’re right beside each other. What do they have in common?

Don't let happiness slip through your fingers because of old angers and mistakes.

Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes

Being a woman attracted to another woman was confusing; a constant game of comparison and lust. You never quite knew whether you were jealous of their body or just jealous of the person who got to touch it.

Tamsin wanted to count every single one, commit them all to memory so that even when she closed her eyes, she would see a constellation of Wren.

I love you and so nothing can touch you, Neve. And if you love me, it makes me immortal. The universe will move and make space for us, for this love. Believe me.

What if it was my imagination that could open this long-sealed door? And if that key let the terror walk right into my own life, so be it.

In that moment they didn’t need words. Their matching expressions spoke for them. Let me save you. No, you let me save you.

People break our hearts, but they create more room in them first, and that room makes it possible for us to become more ourselves.

In the fog, she kissed me once, very quickly, and it felt like courage.

Alice reminded me of the woods: vast and beautiful and dark, but overgrown with defence mechanisms; thistles and hogweed, poisonous mushrooms and gnarled roots. Talking to her was like grabbing a fistful of nettles.

I do not feel it. I watch the ink bloom across my skin, guided by her careful hand, watch the little line form between her brows as she concentrates, and the others dancing around us, and the night leaned up against a window, and please remember it like this, just like this. The good part. This part is so fucking good.

Looking at her is like trying to see to the bottom of the ocean, fathomless and unknowable

Oh, she deserves so many good things, and I want to be one of them

Just because the straights in Hollywood don’t know how to tell my story doesn’t mean it’s not out there.

Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?

Oh I see what's happening to me, I think to myself, her curls against my jaw. Oh, okay. Oh shit.

I want you to stay in the city for a month." "Why?" Because I would miss you. Because I am not ready to let you go.

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.

And Delilah had gotten through life by putting herself first, only concentrating herself with what she knew was true, because she’d learned a long time ago that she couldn’t control anyone but herself. She couldn’t change anyone’s mind, couldn’t make someone love her who had no interest in doing so, and couldn’t keep someone from leaving her if that’s what they wanted to do.

The women that survived me! They stepped out of their houses into the daylight and if I'd had any breath I would have been breathless at the sight of them. The hands of women. The ankles of women. The voices of women as they called to each other across the square.

Because I am miserable and so viciously in love with her, I eat the soup.

I tell her I sing roses too, / My hands in the dirt where she lives forever

It's not who I want to be. I want to be soft, and I don't want to take shit from any-one.

I did not, in the end, want to share the truth, because the words of love inside me felt like the only part of her that could ever remain mine.

But you would do it for me, For everyone else. You do not get to be alone in that, Eris; you do not get to save people without them doing same for you.

I was proud of the way I was, but sometimes being bisexual was like running a race with your ankles tied together. If you dated a guy, people said you were really straight. If you were with a girl, you were actually gay. There was no winning. It only made telling people harder.

The first time Dre touched me without our clothes on, she kept running her hand from waist to hip. & I wanted to write Mami a thank-you text, for giving my body a spot that was made to nest Dre's hand.

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 mom’s favorite, and the whole thing seemed to be a feat of mechanical physics. It didn’t 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? Couldn’t be gayer if she tried.

Either way, there was the clear sense that we were no longer just background characters in each other’s lives, passing through the periphery with mutual disdain. Our roots had suddenly and irrevocably knotted together.

Marynka was Midday. Her opposite. Her rival. Her. . . Was there even a word for a rival who you also wanted to kiss? Whatever she was, Marynka was the very last person she should be having those sorts of thoughts about.

Wren didn't think kissing anyone had ever felt like this. Like it was pulling. her together and breaking her apart all at the same time. As if this kiss could make her. A kiss to end times. Perhaps a kiss to start times.

Being with girls is the same—it’s shameless and gritty, it’s not as soft as people make it out to be. It’s soft with men too. Even unknowingly, we diminish ourselves little by little to feel more loved. As girls, we don’t need to diminish ourselves when we’re together, we fit in every sense of the word. It doesn’t matter if we’re bruised, bloody, or empty, we become these things together—we fit.

You’re more than my desire, Sabine. If I’m your home, then you’re my safe harbor. The sanctuary where I can finally rest. You’re my everything—my truth, my strength, my trust, my hope, and all my love. You’re the rest of my life.

Sometimes, when I walk into a church, I’m not sure I’m supposed to be there, even though it feels like home. Home hasn’t always been a good place for me to be.

She hadn't anticipated Maud Blyth. She didn't know how anyone ever could.

So often, beauty had absolutely nothing to do with the way something looked and everything to do with how it made you feel.

Another word for lesbian is: devourer of the dark.

Girl magic. What we didn't know yet, was if this magic was the stuff of fairytales or of nightmares.

What did you think?" I blurted, "That when you wanted something, you wouldn't rest until you got it." "Only when we are talking about women, dear Nirrim.

I imagined her springing from her father’s head, fully formed, like Athena.

Sometimes, letting go and realizing that things will unfold as they should is the best thing you can do for yourself.

The more you repress something, the stronger that desire is fueled.

I didn't truly believe it back then. That I deserved to be seen. I do now, though. I do. And being seen requires being open about myself. Joan looks at me, soft, patient. I want to be seen.

Being your friend and knowing that you're happy, even if it's with someone else, even if my heart is breaking, is worth it. But if you love me? If you love me Mia, then be brave and love me.

I swear to love you always. To back you up even when you're wrong. To make you laugh when you realize you've built that IKEA bookshelf all backwards. To indulge every whim and passion. And to always be your number one fan. Until death do us part, I will stand by your side.

I let it all out: the joy and the pain. The waiting and the wanting. The future and the past. We kiss for so long I can't tell the difference between seconds and minutes anymore, but it's still not enough. I will never get enough of this. Kissing Iz feels like coming home.

They melted into a series of deep, lush kisses, hot and dizzying and endless, lips moving together, Crier’s mouth opening beneath Ayla’s, the taste of her like summer rain. Ayla pushed into her over and over again, taking her mouth, already addicted to this, to her, to Crier, everything about her, taste and scent and the warmth of her skin under Ayla’s hands.

She will laugh. The sound is as strange, at Briar, as I imagine it must be in a prison or a church. Sometimes, she will sing. Once we talk of dancing. She rises and lifts her skirt, to show me a step. Then she pulls me to my feet, and turns and turns me; and I feel, where she presses against me, the quickening beat of her heart - I feel it pass from her to me and become mine.

It’s also joy. The joy to be here, to be free and finally able to walk around with pride and dignity as a lesbian woman in the midst of all these life-affirming rainbows, without worrying about who might see and possibly judge me.

They were still holding hands. They hadn’t let go, not even once. Ayla’s hand was sweaty; there was dirt and sweat and probably blood slicking their palms, but she didn’t want to lose this point of contact. This point of warmth, solidity, in the middle of a huge and frightening thing. The machinery of war.

This Summer has been just a little too warm, the sun has been a little too bright. My thoughts have been a little bit too uncontrollable. And my emotions a little too humid. They only grow more humid. It all just gets stickier. Soon I think I will be unable to go even one day without lying on the grass with her.

She lays her hand along my jaw and kisses me like she means it, and I am breathless and weightless and dizzy at the very fact of her. Lips and tongue and teeth, her hair and her skin and her perfume, and more than anything, her very essence, her fire and her flaws and that steely determination to be better, to always be better.

He lay there and felt something and then her hand holding him and searching lower and he helped with his hands and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?” “No.” “You are changing,” she said. “Oh you are. You are. Yes you are and you’re my girl Catherine. Will you change and be my girl and let me take you?” “You’re Catherine.” “No. I’m Peter. You’re my wonderful Catherine. You’re my beautiful lovely Catherine. You were so good to change. Oh thank you, Catherine, so much. Please understand. Please know and understand. I’m going to make love to you forever.

I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, as we used to sit; and I would try to tell you what I feel. I do not know how I am writing this even to you. I am afraid to stop, or I should tear up the letter, and I don’t want to stop, for I do so want to tell you all.

I’ve learned that love is about finding someone who pulls you to them even when reason might tell you otherwise. Someone who pushes you out of your comfort zone, not because of them doing or saying anything, necessarily, but because they make you want to try new things. They make you want to be daring, because maybe something new and scary doesn’t feel quite as scary by their side.

You need a boyfriend.” Well sure, who doesn’t need a boyfriend? But ealistically, those exotic creatures are hard to come by. At least a quality one. I go to an all- girls school, and meaning no disrespect to my sapphic sisters, but I have no interest in nding a romantic companion there. The rare boy creatures I do meet who aren’t either related to me or who aren’t gay are usually too at ached to their Xboxes to notice me, or their idea of how a teenage girl should look and act comes directly from the pages of Maxim magazine or from the tarty look of a video game character.

If Stella glanced over her shoulder, she'd see grief, depression, and loss. But when she looks forward, there's Elizabeth. The bees under Stella's skin, her bones, and her heart start to buzz and hum. She's alive now and actually living. Maybe that feeling was simply hope, and it was fluttering inside her all along.

My desire was a galloping thing, and her touch, unlike that of boys, didn't snuff it out. If my body had been a passive machine from which men made withdrawals, like an ATM whose code they were handed on the day of their first erection, then with her it was a winning slot machine, screaming jangly music and spewing coins.

Well, then, she said. "You'll keep your name. You'll keep your will. You'll have your own servants to attend you— you will have everything you ask for." This couldn't be happening. "No, wait, I don't—" "Except for one thing," Mir said." Ari froze. "Don't ask me to let you do," Mir said. "Do you understand? Do not ask me.

There will always be men in the world who want to control and hurt and kill us. Men who drug us and drive us off roads and hit us with their fists. Men who take girls and make them their toys. Men who gain pleasure from our pain. […] They will walk through this world until it comes unraveled. They will keep on doing what they’ve been doing for thousands and thousands of years until the earth has had enough and ends us all. […] But today I refuse to fear them, not a single one. They have strength and cruelty and endless complicity. They walk tall and almost always win. But not here, not on the Bend, where owls that were once girls fly free. Not here, where magic rides up to meet my will. […] Here, we are witches and men are nothing. Here, the river has teeth.

As women we're raised to take tepid two-steps, to doubt, to let the other make the move. And when you are caught with another girl in that dance... How many times have I stepped the same steps, trodden the same tired grooves of my mind, an ouroboros of extreme elation and suffocating uncertainty? How does one get out of this labyrinth? Burn all your romantic novels, cough on the fumes till you spit out the sediment? Bury your pink lingerie in a bed of rock, quell those femme yearnings, become stone?

Their mothers did not notice the other moments that made color bloom in their daughters’ cheeks. How Azalea flirted with girls in ruffled dresses. How the thing that first made Estrella fall a little in love with boys or girls was so often their hands, whether they were showing at the edge of a shirt cuff or a lace sleeve. How Gloria blushed when she caught the eye of women in sleek gowns, women who wore their hair in low, smooth chignons and who preferred gray or black or navy. And how she shared her laughter, her true, fluttering laugh, with boys who could more easily be called pretty than handsome.

Did Automae . . . feel things like that? Could an Automa girl feel that tug in her lower belly, that fishhook pull, making her want more, want harder, want deeper, want sweeter? Want hands in her hair, on her waist, on her hips, want—? Don’t go there, Ayla told herself, but she couldn’t help it. Yesterday afternoon in the river, she had seen the whole of Crier’s body, and the yearning that drummed through her wasn’t anything she’d felt before, and her own reaction wasn’t anything she’d felt before, the oceanic pulse between her hips, the things she wanted. Skin on skin, fingers intertwined. She’d tracked the drops of water trailing down Crier’s throat, her collarbone, the curve of her back, down her bare legs when she climbed back up onto the riverbank, and looking hadn’t felt like enough. Did Crier feel the same? Could Crier feel the same? Maybe Ayla already knew the answer. The way Crier had touched her in Elderell, hands flying from Ayla’s arms to her face, fingers raking through her hair, lips parting . . .

Compañera, cuando amábamos (for Juanita Ramos and other spik dykes) ¿Volverán, campañera, esas tardes sordas Cuando nos amábamos tiradas en las sombras bajo otoño? Mis ojos clavados en tu mirada Tu mirada que siempre retiraba al mundo Esas tardes cuando nos acostábamos en las nubes Mano en mano nos paseábamos por las calles Entre niños jugando handball Vendedores y sus sabores de carne chamuzcada. La gente mirando nuestras manos Nos pescaban los ojos y se sonreían cómplices en este asunto del aire suave. En un café u otro nos sentábamos bien cerquita. Nos gustaba todo: las bodegas tiznadas La música de Silvio, el ruido de los trenes Y habichuelas. Compañera, ¿Volverán esas tardes sordas cuando nos amábamos? ¿Te acuerdas cuando te decía ¡tócame!? ¿Cuándo ilesa carne buscaba carne y dientes labios En los laberintos de tus bocas? Esas tardes, islas no descubiertas Cuando caminábamos hasta la orilla. Mis dedos lentos andaban las lomas de tus pechos, Recorriendo la llanura de tu espalda Tus moras hinchándose en mi boca La cueva mojada y racima. Tu corazón en mi lengua hasta en mis sueños. Dos pescadoras nadando en los mares Buscando esa perla. ¿No te acuerdas como nos amábamos, compañera? ¿Volverán esas tardes cuando vacilábamos Pasos largos, manos entrelazadas en la playa? Las gaviotas y las brizas Dos manfloras vagas en una isla de mutua melodía. Tus tiernas palmas y los planetas que se caián. Esas tardes tiñadas de mojo Cuando nos entregábamos a las olas Cuando nos tirábamos En el zacate del parque Dos cuerpos de mujer bajo los árboles Mirando los barcos cruzando el río Tus pestañas barriendo mi cara Dormitando, oliendo tu piel de amapola. Dos extranjeras al borde del abismo Yo caía descabellada encima de tu cuerpo Sobre las lunas llenas de tus pechos Esas tardes cuando se mecía el mundo con mi resuello Dos mujeres que hacían una sola sombra bailarina Esas tardes andábamos hasta que las lámparas Se prendían en las avenidas. ¿Volverán, Compañera, esas tardes  cuando nos amábanos?