sfreedram:

gatheringbones:

I don’t have the book anymore because I slipped it into the locker of my depressed mormon lesbian coworker on the last day of my retail job but it was that kate bornstein book about 101 reasons not to kill yourself and she had a whole section on how every gay and lesbian in history was betraying their assigned gender so utterly that they automatically became trans people and it’s one of those brilliant batshit things trans women say so often that drives the right people bugfuck nuts and I wish I had the full quote

“The next chapter of gender activism was written by the early gay rights activists. They tackled the law of gender that says loud and clear, ‘Real men love women, real women love men.’ 'No we don’t!’ cried the homosexuals.

And these pioneers transgressed a deeply rooted rule of gender. Lesbians and gays transgressed gender. Lesbians and gays are transgender. And they needed to band themselves together under some flag.

But it’s a terrifying thing to say, 'Hey, I’m a man who loves men, so maybe I’m not a real man!’

And it’s a terrifying thing to say, "I’m a woman who loves women, and so what if I’m not a real woman?”

People were even meaner about that kind of talk back in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than they are today. It was difficult enough to say the lesbian and gay stuff, and in most areas of the world, it still is. No one was ready to hear not-man, not-woman, So they called themselves lesbian women and gay men, and they said things like, 'We’re just like you.“

They named themselves after the system that had oppressed them for such a long time. By the simple act of naming themselves women and men, it seems, in Minnie Bruce Pratt’s words, that their imaginations were in thrall to the institutions that oppressed them.”

Kate Bornstein, Hello Cruel World.

chthonic-cassandra:

Interviewer: What difference in usage would you point out in these three languages [Russian, English, French], these three instruments?

Nabokov: Naunces. If you take framboise in French, for example, it’s a scarlet color, a very red color. In English, the word raspberry is rather dull, with perhaps a little brown or violet. A rather cold color. In Russian it’s a burst of light, malinovoe; the word has associations of brilliance, of gaiety, of ringing bells. How can you translate that?

- Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor. Bryan Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Eds.

startrekquotes:

“Oh, the sound of male ego. You travel half way across the galaxy and it’s still the same song.”

— Eve McHuron, Star Trek: The Original Series, 1x06

diffidentlibraryghost:

[IMG ID: a silver One Ring stands on its edge at the top of a piece of white paper. On the paper is a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien with the vowels stylized to appear Elvish.

Text reads: “if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world -J.R.R. Tolkien”

END ID]

irresistible-revolution:

“Childhood is supposed to be a radiant springtime but mine seems to have been always autumn, the gales seething in the big beeches behind this old gate-lodge, as they’re doing right now, and the rooks above them wheeling haphazard, like scraps of char from a bonfire, and a custard-coloured gleam having its last go low down in the western sky. Besides, I’m tired of the past, of the wish to be there and not here. When I was there I writhed fretfully enough in my fetters.”

— John Banville, from The Blue Guitar (Borzoi Books, 2015)

indeskidgepoetry:

“Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.”

— James Baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (via soracities)

irresistible-revolution:

“In the West, you find the idea that only humans have language. I never believed that. We know bacteria sing to each other, that even subatomic particles are self-aware and communicate and tangle with one another. So, for me, the universe is itself language; everything is speaking to everything else, in particular chemical, sonic, and territorial languages. There are sorts we can’t even imagine, yet together they form part of what we as humans can sense and perceive. We can talk about things as if we know what we are talking about. That’s the most fascinating thing in the world because in truth we don’t know much at all. What we don’t know composes 99.9 percent of the real. That possibility of sensing what we cannot name makes language what it is—a reaching for what cannot be said.”

— Cecilia Vicuña, from an interview in BOMB Magazine (via tasavvur)

heavenlyyshecomes:

💓💓

• “If Moses had seen the way my friend’s face blushes when he’s drunk, and his beautiful curls and wonderful hands, he would not have written in his Torah: do not lie with a man” (rabbi yehuda al-harizi/judah ben solomon harizi, book of taḥkemoni)

• “The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.” ( Mikko Harvey, from “For M,” Foundry)

• I want to stay on the back porch / while the world tilts / toward sleep, until what I love /misses me, and calls me in. (Dorianne Laux, from “On the Back Porch,” Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems )

• “I am sitting at my kitchen table waiting for my lover to arrive with lettuce and tomatoes and rum and sherry wine and a big floury loaf of bread in the fading sunlight. Coffee is percolating gently, and my mood is mellow. I have been very happy lately, just wallowing in it selfishly, knowing it will not last very long, which is all the more reason to enjoy it now.” (Tennessee Williams, from a letter to Donald Windham)

•I cannot write about Damascus, without the jasmine climbing on my fingers. I cannot say Her name, without my mouth getting overcrowded with apricot juice, blackberries and quince” (Nizar Qabbani, A Green Lantern on Damascus’ Door)

• “Put your heart in it” “My heart’s with you. I don’t have it anymore” (Dear Ex, 2018)

• "Why did you call me at the office today?” “I had nothing to do. I wanted to hear your voice.” (In The Mood For Love, 2000)

• I’ve dreamt about you nearly every night this week (Arctic Monkeys)

• This tweet

• Sharing a bubble bath on a rainy day, Santa Cruz, February 2015.

• Chungking Express (1994)

Can you believe he actually thinks that I am really alive?

Everclear “I Will Buy You a New Life”