thy-quotes-collection

A collection of quotes that struck me in some way (though I tend to over-highlight so there may often be blocks of text rather than quotes).

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Navigation

Here are a list of all the media I’ve read which features quotes on this blog.

BOOKS

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell & Illustrated by Ned Asta

The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales translated by Naomi Lewis

ARTICLES

Eraserhead by Jude Doyle

I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out. by Jennifer Coates

NEWS PAPERS

Gay City News, Volume 25, Issue 4 | Feb. 19 - Mar. 4, 2026

SONG LYRICS

My Chemical Romance

ALL LYRICS

[thandelyon]

✨Dear Black Girl, It’s ok to rest. ✨

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[Image ID: Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman.

Successful women? Yes. Productive women? Plenty. Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them. But relaxed women? At ease women? Women who aren't afraid to take up space in the world? Women who prioritise rest and pleasure and play? Women who give themselves unconditional permission to relax - without guilt, without apology, without feeling like they need to earn it? I'm not sure I've ever met a woman like that. But I would like to become one. I would like us all to become one.

Nicola Jane Hobbs /.End ID]

[Image ID: A painting showing the corner of a white room with a bed and a white comforter. The comforter is ruffled and crooked. A black woman is in the bed, propped up on her elbows. Her back is facing us. Her lower half is under the covers and her top half is exposed and naked. Her dark black Afro and skin create a striking contrast against the white room and bedding around her. /.End ID]

[Image ID: A photograph of Bell Hooks sat criss-cross with her arm resting on the back of a red couch, propping up her head. A book is open in her lap with a few more books piled on the floor next to her. She's dressed in loose black clothing and barefoot. Her hair is worn in a natural Afro. She's looking forward and smiling softly. /.End ID]

[Image ID: A photograph of Audre Lorde lounging in a stripe cushioned lounge chair with her feet crossed and resting on a matching ottoman on a deck attached to the wooden siding of a house. There are two books stacked next to her feet on the ottoman. She holds another book loosely in one hand. Her sunglasses are resting on her lap and she is relaxing in the sun. /.End ID]

[Image ID: A painting by Danielle McKinney depicting a black person with short braids. One hand holds a cigarette between their fingers while their head sits in their palm and their elbow rests on a table. Their nails are painted red. In front of them is a white kettle and tea cup with blue detailing. The tea cup sits atop a similarly decorated tea cup plate. /.End ID]

[Image ID: A photograph of three black women who are relaxing in the thick grass in the shade with a few spots of sunlight that broke through the trees where they rest. Two of the girls are sat back to back and the third is lying on her side with her head resting on her arms. She looks asleep. /.End ID]

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A white academic welcomes the appearance of a collection by non-Black women of Color. "It allows me to deal with racism without dealing with the harshness of Black women," she says to me.

(1981) Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”

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I wheel my two-year-old daughter in a shopping cart through a supermarket in Eastchester in 1967, and a little white girl riding past in her mother's cart calls out excitedly, "Oh look, Mommy, a baby maid!" And your mother shushes you, but she does not correct you. And so fifteen years later, at a conference on racism, you can still find that story humorous. But I hear your laughter is full of terror and disease.

(1981) Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”

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After I read from my work entitled "Poems for Women in Rage," a white woman asks me: "Are you going to do anything with how we can deal directly with our anger? I feel it's so important." I ask, "How do you use your rage?" And then I have to turn away from the blank look in her eyes, before she can invite me to participate in her own annihilation. I do not exist to feel her anger for her.

(1981) Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”

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After fifteen years of a women's movement which professes to address the life concerns and possible futures of all women, I still hear, on campus after campus, "How can we address the issues of racism? No women of Color attended." Or, the other side of that statement, "We have no one in our department equipped to teach their work." In other words, racism is a Black women's problem, a problem of women of Color, and only we can discuss it.

(1981) Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”

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I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a white woman says, "Tell me how you feel but don't say it too harshly or I cannot hear you." But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life may change?

(1981) Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”

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trans men will write multiple pages about how they're erased from feminism and not mention trans women once. classic man shit

I can only assume you are referring to the quotes I posted from Jude Doyle's article called Eraserhead which talks about the erasure of trans men/mascs and Doyle's experience as a prominent feminist who realized he was trans and the hostility and erasure he experienced throughout his transition.

Trans women were not mentioned because not everything is about trans women. When trans women talk about their experiences, we don't expect them to talk about trans men, because it's not about trans men.

This is also about the life of one specific person- Jude Doyle: A trans masculine person who was a prominent feminist before transition, and whose transition led to them being a target for mass harassment, violence, transandrophobia and transphobia. To police someone's life story is violence and erasure, which you would know if you read Doyle's words in full instead of sending a reactionary ask based on a gut reaction to a trans man talking about his unique oppression.

"They call it erasure, when this happens. I wasn't prepared for how literal the term was. Every day, I could feel myself disappear. I fall silent, because a person who can't exist can't argue." [...] "I can't imagine a person who is willing to hear me. I can't foresee anything but hostility coming from the other side of the screen."

You are proving everything Doyle said to be true.

I also notice you say "class man shit", completely erasing the "trans" part of "trans man" which is something Doyle talked about in said article. The erasure of "trans" from that statement is quite telling of your intentions.

"This wasn't about accountability. This was people tactically forgetting my entire life, including incidents from my life they had personally witnessed or been involved in, so that they could shame me for transitioning. It was bad for me to be a man; if I was a man, I was a bad man, I was all the worst things men are. I was hulking, I was threatening, I was predatory, I was violent."

[...]

"I would go from being all the worst things about men to being all the worst things about women. I was treated as both genders, but only the most monstrous stereotype of each one."

If you see someone tentatively finding their voice after being silenced for so long, and your reaction is to try to silence them again, then you are a horrid person.

For long, I have remained silent in the wake of such asks and comments. I didn't want to platform and spread such violent words and sentiments, however, as I've seen others choose to contest such statements and cruelty, I have seen the importance in challenging these statements. I have found comfort in other's counter-arguments towards such statements and have seen minds and hearts change in a way that sparks hope. So I've decided to not remain silent on such matters any longer.

For even Doyle says:

"If you don't speak, someone will speak for you."

And I will not be spoken for.

I will not have my reality defined on someone else's terms.

I will not be made invisible.

I will not be erased.

"whatever I'm afraid of saying is already true, and denial will not change it. I remind myself that the wrong people benefit from my silence, and will use it to write a version of my life I can't recognize, or just write me out of the world." [...] "I cannot give you every man's story, every trans man's story, every trans person's story; I don't know them. What I do know is that every new story helps map the territory."

Doyle never claimed to speak for all trans people. He only claimed to speak for himself, and encourages others to share their own stories.

So, why do you attempt to silence another trans person's story when you could have instead shared your own story?

What do you gain from sending such an ask?

Don't wrap your violence towards trans men within a performative care for trans women.

Doyle's work has come to mean a lot to me. It has given me a voice of my own.

I hope for all trans people to someday find this voice- all marginalized people. You will not find your voice by trying to take the voice of others.

Dear anon, I hope you find something more meaningful to do with your time than stalking the transandrophobia tag to leave cruel asks on blogs less than an hour old. I hope your activism becomes something near substantial one day, and you learn to love trans women more than you hate trans men.

I also hope you learn to read things in full, or even in half, before falling into a blind rage over nothing.

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WOMEN WISDOM

The strong women told the faggots that the more you share, the less you need. At first the faggots thought the strong women were being either obtuse or utopian. But as they began to share their clothes and their secrets and their magic potions and their spaces and their incantations and their animals and their books and their visions and their food, they learned, slowly, that the more they shared with each other, the more there was that could be shared and the less any one faggot needed.

THE MORE THAT GOES AROUND THE MORE YOU GET BACK.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell & Illustrated by Ned Asta

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We gotta keep each other alive any way we can 'cause nobody else is goin' do it.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell & Illustrated by Ned Asta

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It is categories in the mind and guns in their hands which keep us enslaved.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell & Illustrated by Ned Asta

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WOMEN WISDOM

The strong women told the faggots that there are two important things to remember about the coming revolu-tions. The first is that we will get our asses kicked. The second is that we will win.

The faggots knew the first. Faggot ass-kicking is a time-honored sport of the men. But the faggots did not know about the second. They had never thought about winning before.

They did not even know what winning meant. So they asked the strong women and the strong women said winning was like surviving, only better. As the strong women explained winning, the faggots were surprised and then excited. The faggots knew about surviving for they always had and this was going to be just plain better. That made ass-kicking different. Getting your ass kicked and then winning elevated the entire enterprise of making revolution.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell, Illustrated by Ned Asta

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'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word

And love dares you to care for

The people on the (People on streets) edge of the night

And love (People on streets) dares you to change our way of

Caring about ourselves

Under Pressure by Queen & David Bowie

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I've told you time and time again

You sing the words, but don't know what it means (I'm not okay)

I'm Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance

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THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS EASY FOR THE QUEER MEN

A man says, "Why don't you and the little lady come for dinner next week?"'

A queer man must find something to say, maybe, "I don't possess a little lady." No, that will never do. Maybe, "She's staying with her mother, who's very ill, you know." Why not, "My boyfriend and I would love to." Come on, it's always the same.

"Thanks so much, but it's impossible right now. Things aren't that good between us. We're trying to work it out. But it's hard. And you know..." And on and on and on and on and on as long as it takes to create a girlfriend who can be disposed of whenever the bluff is called.

Once again a fither inquires of his male child, "Isn't it time you got married?"

A queer man says wearily what has been said so often, "I just haven't met anyone yet."

The sad father says, "It is time. Love is not everything." The queer man almost explains, then says, "You just don't understand me so stop asking."

The sad father stops asking and does not understand.

A woman falls in love with a queer man.

She says, "I like being with you because you don't try to paw me all the time."

The queer man says, "Yeah, I know."

They go to fancy places and opening nights and cool parties.

She says, "I've told you so much about myself, but I feel I don't know that much about you yet.

The queer man says, "Yeah, I know." She says, "Love without sex is new for me."

The queer man, sad at this deception and her confusion, says,

"Yeah, I know."

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell & Illustrated by Ned Asta

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But Hollyhock does not live here in contentment. He likes his cool space and his faggot friends but he feels cut off from something that if he had would make him feel more whole and he does not know what it is. So he entertains and his life goes on. Yet at night alone he wonders what is missing and if he will ever find it.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell & Illustrated by Ned Asta

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Pinetree sighs, "Poor is sad. But the rich do not experience deep loving friendship. They merely take care of their own kind, which is not the same."

They all sigh. They know that without the uncalculated giving of affection everyone is lost. They know that friendship freely given sustains them.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell & Illustrated by Ned Asta