quotes & thoughts

Will the afterlife be harder if I remember the people I love, or forget them? Either way, please let me remember.

It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less.

"When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into the mirror and saw nothing."

One of the incidents I recall when loading the boats at this point was my seeing a young woman clinging tightly to a baby in her arms as she approached near the ship’s high rail, but unwilling even for a moment to allow anyone else to hold the little one while assisting her to board the lifeboat. As she drew back sorrowfully to the outer edge of the crowd on the deck, I followed and persuaded her to accompany me to the rail again, promising if she would entrust the baby to me I would see that the officer passed it to her after she got aboard. I remember her trepidation as she acceded to my suggestion and the happy expression of relief when the mother was safely seated with the baby restored to her. “Where is my baby?” was her anxious wail. “I have your baby,” I cried, as it was tenderly handed along. I remember this incident well because of my feeling at the time, when I had the babe in my care; though the interval was short, I wondered how I should manage with it in my arms if the lifeboats got away and I should be plunged into the water with it as the ship sank.

deep down, she knew hope and denial were reluctant neighbors. They glared at each other from across the same silty river of circumstance.

'You need to learn how to lose like a man,’ he said. ‘I don’t care how bad you choke: always shake the other bloke’s hand.’ This was Stoicism 101. There was no more important quality in a man than making eye contact with heartbreak.

"[My OCD]’s much better than when I was at my worst. Absolutely. Because now I’m able to function. I can eat now and I can take care of myself and I can work enough to pay rent and I can have this conversation with you. So, yeah, my life is so much better. [..] Still, after all these years, I still … It still hurts. And I still cry out to nobody in particular, “Why the fuck is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me?”’

""When you overcome your OCD, you’re not going to be normal [...] because the average person does not cope well with uncertainty. They may be coping better than you right now, but they don’t really cope with it. They’re really good at denial. You don’t get to do denial. You get heaven or hell. I think you’ve done an excellent study of hell. Let’s try the other," he says, gesturing wildly with his hands. ‘Study of hell’ is probably the best description of OCD I’ve ever heard."

By reducing the availability of ‘legitimate’ evidence of queer women through saying, Oh! It was perfectly normal for women to kiss and write love letters to each other in the 1800s, a danger of losing queer histories develops due to an assumption of heterosexuality. It’s not as though historic figures would leave pages in their journal with the words I AM A HOMOSEXUAL for modern historians to interpret. Even if they did, some would disregard it as a joke.

"I don’t want to die in my sleep, either. I view death as my final adventure and I am reluctant to be cheated out of a moment of it. I am only ever going to experience it once, after all. I want to be able to recognise death, to hear her coming, to see her, to touch her, smell her and taste her; to undergo the assault on all of my senses and, in my last moments, to understand her as completely as is humanly possible. This is the one event that my life has always been leading up to, and I don’t want to miss anything by not having a front-row seat."

"You can be you and be loved by me."