Kelly J. Cogswell Quotes

Hell, a pig had most humans beat, smarter than small children, and we didn't eat those but maybe we should.

I wanted to drag them all out, flay us all, destroy all the artificial separations of history. You'd merely done what I had, after all
split from two cells into four then eight then sixteen until you've accumulated all your arms and legs and organs and pushed yourself into the world
so fucking what? You honkey, nigger, spic, dyke, cunt. If I cry out, who will hear me?

I feel weird spilling it now but have to. Because after a while, it took root, the way shared stories do when you live with them long enough. They affect your DNA like radiation. They give birth to you.

It is a big deal to work with people who are different from you. And if you're white or of a higher class,no matter what race you are, you'll probably mess up. Maybe get yelled at. But there are worse things. Like keeping your dignity safe at home, while the world goes to hell.

There was no single gay point of view. Like skin color or gender or any of those arbitrary, sometimes artificial, difference sexual orientation didn't make us all the same. But it did affect us. It had to.

It inspired a kind of Huck Finn moment when I decided it was better to risk hell than shrivel in the midst of a toxic Southern Baptist morality.

I begged Ana to shut them up, come out as Cuban, play the jail card. But she refused to claim that authority. 'It will mean you, as a Kentucky girl, have nothing valuable to say about Cuba. And Cubans have nothing to say about the rest of the world.