Queer Lit Quotes

She didn't know that my heart was a sandstorm waiting to open her skin in a desert of cuts. She didn't know the animal that waited in my stomach, silently shredding the walls. For her, my heart wore small white shoes and carried a purse, went to bed early. I wanted to shoot myself into her arms so she understood the need to crash cars with me, to tear up pavement because we were beautiful. ~ Michelle Tea

I felt that blush in my chest as we talked stupid talk never quite revealing our queerness to each other but somehow wordlessly generating volumes of desire like some kind of sublanguage that makes you want to splash into it even with all its tensions. ~ David Wojnarowicz

When I left, I took everything with me...I reached under my bed where there were two leather-bound journals that had gold lettering on the front covers and that fastened with a flimsy lock. I read the lettering out loud to myself and gingerly placed the books into my backpack. Diary. ~ Tanya Marquardt

We were magical and alive - we cared about music and conversation, sex and spit and blood, holding on tight to the space between youth and adulthood. When I look back at that time, my nostalgia can be blinding. Because we weren't night dwellers, vampires who would live forever. We were a bunch of kids playing at being Lost Boys, looking for our version of Neverland. ~ Tanya Marquardt

In loving him, I saw a cigarette between the fingers of a hand, smoke blowing backwards into the room and sputtering planes diving low through the clouds. In loving him, I saw men encouraging each other to lay down their arms. In loving him, I saw small-town laborers creating excavations that other men spend their lives trying to fill. In loving him, I saw moving films of stone buildings; I saw a hand in prison dragging snow in from the sill. In loving him, I saw great houses being erected that would soon slide into the waiting and stirring seas. I saw him freeing me from the silences of the interior life. ~ David Wojnarowicz

Filip was from San Jose, but his painfully good looks excused that. He was tall, six-foot-something-or-other, intensely blue eyes, chiseled features, massive package. Didn't have Prince Albert in a Can, but he did have a thick gauged one through his cock head. His name really wasn't Filip, it was Brent, an all-American moniker about as dark and mysterious as pastel-colored bobby socks. Initially, I joked about his choice of sobriquet, changing his name to go off to the big city, transform into Mr. Big Stuff, until it dawned on me I'd done the same damn thing with my 'Catalyst' surname. So I shut up.

He comported himself with rigid shoulders and stiff gestures, as if he had a secret. Turns out he did. Filip was married, had a wife for more than a year now, but they had some kind of crazy arrangement. Days they were a couple; evenings they were free to do as they pleased. Where'd they come up with that idea, Jerry Springer?



"If you wanted to go back to your place, we could," Filip suggested. "But only until dawn." Yeah, right. An affair is an affair, the way I see it. What difference is there between 5 and 7 a.m.? Was their marriage some sort of religious fasting thing, starve until the sun sets then binge and party down? I'd never sunk my teeth into married meat, but figured it was a logical progression from my I'm Not Gay But It's Different With You saga. And if I was going to sin, I was gonna sin good. That means no peeking to see whether it's still d ~ Clint Catalyst

Do you prefer him or her? Either one's cool-I'm genderfluid. ~ Mvxx. Amillivn

All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer. ~ Robert Owen

We lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, is the other that hides in me? ~ Arthur Machen

Like a ghost that dances on the tip of a lit cigarette,
I know what romance is, but it hasn't happened yet.
Watch it floating up to heaven only knows,
Disappearing before you get too close-
It's only smoke. You might say a flame was burning, only smoke--
but my heart is more discerning,
I keep dreaming of a fire
But when I wake up to the cold--
It's only smoke.

Eyes are hypnotizing when they hold you within their embrace.
Words are mezmerizing even when they've got nothing to say.
The game is charming in an empty kind of way.
What's the harm in asking me to play?
It's only smoke. You might say a flame was burning, only smoke--
but my heart is more discerning,
I keep dreaming of a fire
But when I wake up to the cold--
It's only smoke. ~ Jane Monheit

He who would speak of unknown authors, buried beneath the rubble of centuries, inevitably lays himself open, at least to begin with, to the suspicion of being a crotchety sort with very queer tastes. ~ Arno Schmidt

Like that time I came home and Mum was sick, not letting me upstairs. Later on I heard Dad actually blaming her for being sick. That must have been the first time I felt queer. ~ Ian Cross

I'm A Queer Poet Too! She stressed queer not because she walked around identifying as a queer poet but so that the youth understood she would fuck her. ~ Michelle Tea

It was a color I didn't realize the earth could make without the help of human beings. I knew the water would be blue, but I had in mind a tamer, more pastel blue: a light color through which all the sand and fish underneath would be clearly visible. This water was like super-wavy, lit up turquoise, and so beautiful I could hardly take my eyes off it. The moment I was spellbound by the color of the water was the moment I knew I had been in New York for to long and my decision to leave was a good one. ~ Margot Berwin

I lit up like a Christmas tree-Augustus Waters ~ John Green

a child is a fire to be lit, not a vase to be filled ~ Francois Rabelais

Hope is patience with the lamp lit. ~ Tertullian

Then she said she wondered if she really loved me or not. I, of course, couldn't enlighten her as to that. And, after another silence, she murmured something about my being "a queer fellow." "And I daresay that's why I love you," she added. "But maybe that's why one day I'll come to hate you. ~ Albert Camus

Booze and boys, ain't nothing in the universe that'll make a girl stupid faster. ~ Lois Greiman

I'm not sure if you've noticed this yet, but Jenny Sullivan likes to overuse people's first names. It's a technique she read about in a book called Own It - Take Life By The Bollocks. She once said my name so many times I disconnected from it entirely. ~ Claire Garber

They need to get a good PR guy." "What's a PR guy?" "They're kind of like the old Greek sophists who played with words until you believed up was down. PR guys get paid to make people believe that a pile of shit is an investment in soil fertility. Professional liars." "Ah!" Manannan's expression lit with comprehension. "They are politicians?" "No, they're smarter and less pretty. They advise politicians. ~ Kevin Hearne

He smiled, and it lit up his whole face. ~ Richelle Mead

Life has a whimsical way of kicking you in the throat. I find it to
be one huge cosmic joke at our expense, only nobody is laughing
but the forces that be - given that they are even a wee bit human. ~ Lori Goldson

I was a candle that had never known a flame, and now that the flame was lit, I softened and glowed in a way I had not known was possible. ~ Danielle Teller

Look at this, Grace," Peg's e-mail said. "He's entrancing those people. I just realized. Taking them out of themselves. Ty is sort of like a medicine man. A shaman.
P.S. Have you called him? ~ Shelle Sumners

There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You might have passed any one of them upon the street, and thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had ever seen brought together at any exclusively female ensemble. ~ Sarah Waters

…there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Still rarer is the man who thinks habitually, who applies reason, rather than habit pattern, to all his activity. Unless he masques himself, his is a dangerous life; he is regarded as queer, untrustworthy, subversive of public morals; he is a pink monkey among brown monkeys
a fatal mistake. Unless the pink monkey can dye himself brown before he is caught.
The brown monkey's instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.
Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption, and non-fact. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I remember a lecture from one of my lit classes about a theory called "Reader Response", which basically says: More often than not, it's the readers --- not the writers --- who determine what a book means. ~ Kelly Corrigan

Twice in one day?" I asked. "And how'd you even get up here?"
He flashed his easy smile. "Someone put a lit match in one of the bathroom's garbage cans. Damn shame. The staff's kind of busy. Come on, I'm springing you."
I shook my head. Setting fires was apparently a new sign of affection. Christian had done it and now Mason. ~ Richelle Mead

There is no such thing as a miracle. A miracle is just what somebody else doesn't understand. If we went back into the Stone Age and we lit a match, they'd say, "Ahh miracla, miracla!" ~ Frederick Lenz

Yeah, world peace would be all right, but what about a day off in a slab of ham the size of my head. ~ Lois Greiman

I'm wondering how, for all these years, the church has gotten away with so many oppressive acts toward women, Indigenous peoples, Black people, other people of color, disabled people, immigrants, those who journey with depression or anxiety, those who grieve, and those who are gender nonbinary, transgender, or queer. Can we go to church and be angry? Can we go to church and be furious? Can we go to church and ask questions? Can we go to church and fight against what we believe is wrong within it?

Absolutely.

Those of us who are angry cannot wait for the church to give us permission, because white supremacy will never give the oppressed permission to be angry. ~ Kaitlin B. Curtice

Look up. This is the season of shooting stars. Light, two thousand years old, still dazzling. Let me see your face. Your face lit up by twenty centuries. ~ Jeanette Winterson

You are not my dream girl.

You are this earth. You are not a fantasy: you are my love. And love is friendship lit by a wooden match with a white tip on its red tip. I am your match, and you are mine. ~ Waylon H. Lewis

God, San Francisco was such a thief. A lady of the night, a sorceress with her hands out. Every time, all my years as a child, that we crossed the bridge, we had to pay to get in, pay to get out, pay for every little thing. Oakland was free, San Francisco was not. Pay me, pay me. Pay for the Pacific Ocean and the beach. I am expensive, the city always said, so pay me for my wonderful dark treats like the Steinhart Aquarium, with its dark wide hall lit up by tank after tank of bright gold green blue sharks dolphins whales stinger fish, cold-eyed still-as-a-corpse fish that didn't blink or budge when we tapped the thick glass with our fingernails. Pay, the voice said, to whomever took us on Saturday to the Fleischacker Zoo ... the hand of San Francisco reaches out to grab your stupid little nickels and dimes. Pay. Even as I stood in front of the Fat Lady, whose cackling gap-toothed twelve-feet-high, three-feet-wide body made me laugh for a solid hour, even as I collapsed in tears driven out of my eyes by laughter, I understood that the other name for San Francisco wasn't Frisco; it was pay you dumb jerks from Oakland pay. ~ Judy Juanita

He had a talismanic obsession with final pages. At school he would near a book's conclusion, whether it was pulp science fiction or The Return of the Native, with one hand firmly clamped over the ultimate paragraph, in case his eye lit on a single word which might rob the entire story of its point, spoil the answer to the riddle of why he was reading it. When he shared this with Genevieve, she admitted to him that she always started a book by reading its final page, that she still did, but she wasn't sure why. ~ Luke Kennard

When I'm naked, I really like to do push-ups. No. I think I really tackle it like everything else. If you're going to commit yourself to playing something, you have to be able to understand it. If you can understand it, then you can do it and go balls out with it. But, I've never been in a position where I've been like, "This doesn't feel right." I wouldn't do it, if it was that. I like the shock value of it. I think that, if you use it correctly, it's pretty effective, as long as I'm lit really, really, really well. ~ Charlize Theron

You could buy a car for fifty thousand dollars. A really nice car." Ascanio's eyes lit up. "A Hummer. You could buy a converted Hummer."
"You don't need a Hummer." I said.
"Chicks dig the Hummer."
"You don`t need any chicks either."
He gave me an injured look. "I have needs."
"I have needs too and right now I need you to concentrate on tracking down Jamar`s collection. Get to it."
- Andrea & Ascanio ~ Ilona Andrews

I KNEW IT WAS OVER

when tonight you couldn't make the phone ring
when you used to make the sun rise
when trees used to throw themselves
in front of you
to be paper for love letters
that was how i knew i had to do it

swaddle the kids we never had
against january's cold slice
bundle them in winter
clothes they never needed
so i could drop them off at my mom's
even though she lives on the other side of the country
and at this late west coast hour is
assuredly east coast sleeping
peacefully

her house was lit like a candle
the way homes should be
warm and golden
and home
and the kids ran in
and jumped at the bichon frise
named lucky
that she never had
they hugged the dog
it wriggled
and the kids were happy
yours and mine
the ones we never had
and my mom was

grand maternal, which is to say, with style
that only comes when you've seen
enough to know grace

like when to pretend it's christmas or
a birthday so
she lit her voice with tiny
lights and pretended
she didn't see me crying

as i drove away
to the hotel connected to the bar
where i ordered the cheapest whisky they had

just because it shares your first name
because they don't make a whisky
called baby
and i only thought what i got
was what
i ordered

i ~ Daphne Gottlieb

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky. ~ E.B. White

They waited awhile before lighting the candles; the gloom allowed the past to slip cozily into the present. But the memories were of a time that was gone and didn't overshadow the present. But the memories were vivid, and they made the freinds feel both young and old ... When Chrsitanne finally lit the candles and they saw one another clearly again, she was happy to see in the old faces of the others the young faces they had come across in their memories. we store our youth wihtin us, we can go back to it and find ourselves in it, but it is past
melancholy filled their hearsts, and sympahty, for one another and for themsleves. ~ The Weekend

Her sense of style was juvenile and horrid, and the back of her hand was still inked with a cherry blossom tree she'd drawn in English Lit, so why the fuck was she still hot as shit?
Didn't matter. I hated her anyway.
But her apparent devotion to trying not to be sexy, paired with the fact that she actually was sexy, always made me hard as stone. ~ L.J. Shen

I went back to the bench and lit a cigarette and inhaled, the smoke entering my body and filling it with poison, with something. ~ Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Healing is to be in the light of our own consciousness. Healing is an inner light, which exist as a natural radiance around a person. This inner light is in itself a healing force beyond words. This inner light disperses darkness, like when you lit a candle in a dark room and the darkness disappears by itself. This inner light exudes a subtle influence through its mere presence. The more the light in our own consciousness is lit, the more it creates a subtle effect in the world. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

The lamps were lit, and a good fire crackled in the great stone fireplace. There was a discreet chink of china, the brightness of silver teapot and muffin cover, the comforting smell mingled of steaming hot water, toast and a little sweet tobacco. ~ Susan Hill

While I'd been plagued by nightmares of Jonathan's unrest in the hereafter, it was only now that I'd seen Adair again - and seen him so changed - that I could admit, even to myself, that it was him I daydreamed of, who I longed for, who I ached for, physically. That was how I'd betrayed Luke - in my desire for Adair. It wasn't so uncommon, was it? Living with one man while your mind is on another? Being unable to stop thinking of this other man who, for one reason or another, was not the one sitting beside you. Thinking of the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, of his wicked smile and what it was like when he held you, how you responded to the touch of his hands. In solitary moments, you remembered the little intimacies, the feel of his skin against yours, the way he liked to be touched, the velvet nap of his member, the way he tasted. You thought of him even though you could never be with him. His absence nagged like an itch you could never scratch. ~ Alma Katsu

Our minds had met and crossed and understood from the first moment when Victor introduced us in my club, and that queer, inexplicable bond of the heart, breaking through every barrier, every restraint, had kept us close to one another always, in spite of silence, absence, and long years of separation. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

There have been times love has made my human Instincts into animal ones. Once in a dark lit bar, my love said my poems were shit And I, in the light of the candles, Pushed a sword into myself and fell over a cliff Into a neverending ocean. Once a man 5 years my younger Loved me and then gave me up. I raged around him like a bear. I once cheated on a new boyfriend with an old boyfriend. I cheated on an old boyfriend with a new one. Love has the ability to make the world kind, The specifics of one man always blends into another And turns back into my mother's kisses on my cheek. It is I who loves, but it is in turn The world that loves me back. The world loves And I love back, the specifics of it Once in tune. Once we kissed and I was Mesmerized by the blondness of his cheek With the light on it and the sweet smell of the earth. But still the light on the cheek is the desert lizards Who will eat us in the afterworld and in the light of the moon Ther is the exhaust of love falling over everything ~ Dorothea Lasky

The world circles us with light. Yert during every moment of life we are entirely lit from within. - The Tattooed Monk ~ L.G. Bass

The only distinguishing characteristic of a literature professor at the millennium was that he or she wrote about other people's writing. Apart from that, the writing he wrote about didn't even need to be literature, or writing about literature, or even writing about writing about literature. He needed theory...In the unflickering glare, at the center of a severe perspective, Nelson suddenly felt the visceral truth of the world as text; he apperceived the fundamentally linguistic nature of reality. Everything was text, at every level of existence, all the way up from quarks to queer theory. Words arranged in lines; lines arrayed on pages; pages pressed together, bound, and trimmed in books; books arranged cover to cover along a shelf like the words in a line of text; shelves stacked one atop the other like lines of text on a page; rows of shelves pressed together, with just the barest passage for the reader, like the pages of a book. ~ James Hynes

Buster was queer as a cat fart. ~ John Irving

You may ask, why not simply call this literature Christian? Unfortunately, the word Christian is no longer reliable. It has come to mean anyone with a golden heart. And a golden heart would be a positive interference in the writing of fiction. ~ Flannery O'Connor

I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something to say and the power to say it
only I don't know what it is, and I can't make use of the power. If there was some different way of writing ... Or else something else to write about. ~ Aldous Huxley