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1 " I lie there for a while in the dusk, then make a decision, little knowing how it will affect every facet of my life and fiber of my being for the rest of my life: I say no to shame. "
― Alan Cumming , Not My Father's Son
2 " It's actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth, commitment, and openness and mostly you'll be okay. "
3 " Sometimes people do you a favour when they drop out of your life. "
4 " For yes, being a woman, even one with a penis and for the purposes of drama, really made me feel that women have been coerced into a way of presenting themselves that is basically a form of bondage. Their shoes, their skirts, even their nails seem designed to stop them from being able to escape whilst at the same time drawing attention to their sexual and secondary sexual characteristics. And I think that has happened so that men feel they can ogle them and protect them in equal measure. "
5 " Finally, the scariest thing about abuse of any shape or form, is, in my opinion, not the abuse itself, but that if it continues it can begin to feel commonplace and eventually acceptable. "
6 " It is a startling thing, the need to feel utterly believed. "
7 " Memory is so subjective. We all remember in a visceral, emotional way, and so even if we agree on the facts—what was said, what happened where and when—what we take away and store from a moment, what we feel about it, can vary radically. "
8 " But I smell the roses not just to remind myself of how lucky I am, but also to wonder how on earth it all happened. I smell the roses to try and figure out how I came to be in the garden at all. "
9 " Had I not had the childhood I did, would these traits not be so at the forefront of my personality? Who knows? All I know is that I am the product of all the experiences I have had, good and bad, and if I am in a happy place in my life (as I truly am), then I can have no regrets about any of the combination of events and circumstances that have led me to the here and now. "
10 " I love long flights. The feeling of being completely unreachable is something I savor, and the limbolike state of being, having departed but not arrived, somehow allows me to catch up with myself, to regroup and check in. "
11 " It’s hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down. Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I’m sad to say that this method works. If you don’t give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you. I had to pretend I had no joy. It will come as a shock to people who know me now, but being able to express joy was something it took me a long time to be confident enough to do. "
12 " You can't go through sustained cruelty and terror for a large swathe of your life and not talk about it and be okay. "
13 " I realized that I was living my life backwards. I had to be a grown-up when I’d been a little boy, and now I was tending to the little boy who’d never had the chance to properly play… Had I not had the childhood I did, would these traits not be so at the forefront of my personality? Who knows? All I know is that I am the product of all the experiences I have had, good and bad. "
14 " All I know is that I am the product of all the experiences I have had, good and bad, and if I am in a happy place in my life (as I truly am), then I can have no regrets about any of the combination of events and circumstances that have led me to the here and now. "
15 " For yes, being a woman, even one with a penis and for the purposes of drama, really made me feel that women have been coerced into a way of presenting themselves that is basically a form of bondage. Their shoes, their skirts, even their nails seem designed to stop them from being able to escape whilst at the same time drawing attention to their sexual and secondary sexual characteristics. "
16 " Sometimes the worst thing about change is the shock of the change itself and not actually the new circumstances. "
17 " The most important opinion, of both my work and my conduct in life, is my own. "
18 " I loved the sound of the snow. It was calm and echoey at the same time, and the world felt a safer place being insulated by it. My "
19 " And so I have grown up wanting to feel secure when it comes to money, but doing so by treating it as something to be enjoyed, shared, and not given power. "
20 " It’s actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth, commitment, and openness and mostly you’ll be okay. I "
