Memoirists From The United States

"We confuse gay liberation with straight imitation. Straightness is our goal. This pushes us away from the uniqueness that is the gay experience."

"I celebrate that figure as an “outlaw.” That’s someone who lives in defiance of oppressive laws, and, in doing so, thrives against those strictures."

"I cannot tell you what it does to me to hear pre-Stonewall. And even in our literature, even in the art, pre-Stonewall, post-Stonewall. I wrote three books pre-Stonewall and a dozen more post-Stonewall. There’s no demarcation. Gay history is centuries and centuries from the Romans to the Greeks to Oscar Wilde to all kinds of outrages. And those seem to be put back and pre-Stonewall is passive. Post-Stonewall is brave and dignified. I actually have heard things like that…"

"I was bewildered. I did nothing at all to promote the book, even to the extent of denying that I wrote it. I felt that if I left the streets as soon as I had some success, I'd be betraying the world that I wrote about. And the truth is that I couldn't give it up. I'd been hustling for so long that it was a habit."

"…Pershing Square was a gathering of denizens of every type, the gospel people would preach, hustlers would hustle, queens would camp. It was an incredible array of society. There was a cop there that ruled it, I mean as if he was the king. And he was a terror. And if he saw anybody there whom he had not seen, you went downstairs to a little place that was kind of secret. It was very, very weird downstairs, a little room where he would interview you without saying that he suspected you of anything. If it looked like you were hustling or the queens or whatever he would go there and hassle you."

"Every character in City of Night has a strong antecedent…Miss Destiny was very real. That was the name she used, and all those stories were based on my recollections of her. We kept in touch for a few years after the book came out; she'd ring me in the middle of the night, saying she was with one of her 'husbands' who didn't believe she could be a character in a famous novel. Then some boozy voice would come on, and I'd have to say 'Yes, that really is the fabulous Miss Destiny'. After a few years the calls stopped, so I guess Miss Destiny is now rattling her beads in God's face, like she always said she would."

"You have to understand what the world was like back then. Being queer was very dangerous, and there was a lot of stigma about it. Even when I was hustling, it took me a long time to realise myself as a gay man. It's hard to accept that some of us, at one time or another, had heterosexual feelings. I certainly did. I emerged very slowly into homosexuality, despite the way I was living."

"It’s been more difficult for me to come out as a Mexican-American than come out as gay."

"The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education."

"(what are you reading next?) “Educated,” by Tara Westover. This one came from Barack. I actually just finished it, and it is as phenomenal as he — and everyone else — says it is. It’s an engrossing read, a fresh perspective on the power of an education, and it’s also a testament to the way grit and resilience can shape our lives. Also, since I’ve just finished a memoir of my own, I love to see how people choose to tell their own story — the small moments that tell larger truths, the character development, the courage it takes to tell a story fully. Tara’s upbringing was so different from my own, but learning about her world gave me insight into lives and experiences that weren’t a part of my own journey. To me, it’s an example of the extraordinary power of storytelling."

"You were my child. I should have protected you. I lived a lifetime in the moment I read those lines, a life that was not the one I had actually lived. I became a different person, who remembered a different childhood. I didn’t understand the magic of those words then, and I don’t understand it now. I know only this: that when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she’d been, she became that mother for the first time."

"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?"

"Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me."

"The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you."

"That’s all that was left of the life I’d had here: a puzzle whose rules I would never understand, because they were not rules at all but a kind of cage meant to enclose me. I could stay, and search for what had been home, or I could go, now, before the walls shifted and the way out was shut."

"I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money."

"We had been bruised and gashed and concussed, had our legs set on fire and our heads cut open. We had lived in a state of alert, a kind of constant terror, our brains flooding with cortisol because we knew that any of those things might happen at any moment. Because Dad always put faith before safety. Because he believed himself right, and he kept on believing himself right—after the first car crash, after the second, after the bin, the fire, the pallet. And it was us who paid."

"I decided to experiment with normality."

"Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure."

"I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward."

"To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone else’s."

"By the end of the semester the world felt big, and it was hard to imagine returning to the mountain, to a kitchen, or even to a piano in the room next to the kitchen. This caused a kind of crisis in me. My love of music, and my desire to study it, had been compatible with my idea of what a woman is. My love of history and politics and world affairs was not. And yet they called to me."

"My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs."

"I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations. I was drawn to the Pythagorean theorem and its promise of a universal—the ability to predict the nature of any three points containing a right angle, anywhere, always. What I knew of physics I had learned in the junkyard, where the physical world often seemed unstable, capricious. But here was a principal through which the dimensions of life could be defined, captured. Perhaps reality was not wholly volatile. Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense."

"I don’t know how long I sat there reading about it, but at some point I’d read enough. I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. I suppose I was in shock, but whether it was the shock of learning about something horrific, or the shock of learning about my own ignorance, I’m not sure."

"Suspended between fear of the past and fear of the future, I recorded the dream in my journal. Then, without any explanation, as if the connection between the two were obvious, I wrote, I don’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to get a decent education as a child."

"By the end of it, I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested."

"I searched my mind and discovered a new conviction there: I would never be a plural wife. A voice declared this with unyielding finality; the declaration made me tremble. What if God commanded it? I asked. You wouldn’t do it, the voice answered. And I knew it was true."

"The irony was that if Dad was bipolar—or had any of a dozen disorders that might explain his behavior—the same paranoia that was a symptom of the illness would prevent its ever being diagnosed and treated. No one would ever know."

"The seed of curiosity had been planted; it needed nothing more than time and boredom to grow."

"The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand."

"Politeness often blocks honesty. That seems to be the way of the world. Nobody wants to be the one who tells a person some uncomfortable, perhaps unflattering, home truths."

"Renowned psychotherapist Carl Jung once said, "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." Think about that for a second: imagine being the unfiltered, no-pretend, don't-care-what-others-think, authentic version of you. Imagine that. Personally, I'm chasing that privilege that Carl Jung referred to: a true understanding of myself. I'm learning more about who I am on a daily basis. It's a constant search, but I'm lured by the promise of the discovery of gold nuggets, especially as I face some of life's most difficult questions, moments, and situations."

"Nothing is permanent."

"imbued with the power to change you reclaim yourself"

"The initial shock of coming out was strange and a bit uncomfortable. But after a few weeks, everything got so much better. The best way to describe it is that I simply felt light, free of a burdensome secret that was weighing on not only my mind but my entire being. After I was able to utter the words "I am gay" to other people, I was overcome with relief, as if saying those words purged built-in toxins from my body. I felt alive again. Healed from the inside. Renewed. Empowered."

"[…] I'm not sure what flipped that switch, but once it was turned on, I had the powerful realisation that I could do anything and be anyone I wanted to be. […] Confidence is something we can all wear. Take it from me, it can be learned and acquired over time. Confident people were not born confident. […] The more we work on a trait that we wish to develop, the stronger it gets, like a muscle. The more we believe something about ourselves, the more we reprogram our thinking. The more we dwell on the positive, the less the negative can touch us. None of us are stuck with the hand we are dealt. We can shuffle the deck and deal the cards out again. No one can tell you who you should be. You need to be the person you want to be."

"The mind seeks clarity, but our souls prefer to wander into ambiguity. It's OKAY to not know your future. It's acceptable to have no idea what you want to do. Don't let anyone trick you into thinking otherwise. An offer, opportunity, breakthrough, or brain wave could happen at any moment and change the trajectory of your life. Surely the key to life is being open to such a possibility. Let none of us be fooled into thinking we need to know what the future holds. Everyone's been brainwashed into thinking they know or should know. We'll be alright if we simply keep moving forward. At least, that's what I keep telling myself. So next time someone asks about your five-year plan, maybe shrug your shoulders and admit, "I don't know - I'm happy to see where life takes me.""

"You have control over your thoughts; thoughts do not have control over you. They're like little dirt specks on the windshield of life that you simply need to wipe away. […] We give dark thoughts our power. Why would we ever think that mere thoughts are stronger than us? They're not. We can outwit them. Rule them. Survive them. They represent internal stormy weather ... and all storms pass. [...] You know that positivity exists - you only have to sift through the rubble a bit."

"I refuse to let this world abuse my already beaten soul"

"Knowing what I know now, there are a few things I would love to tell my younger self: have faith in yourself and what you're doing, keep on trekking, and trust that everything will fall into place. It's okay not to know where you're headed, so long as you keep moving forward. Just pick up the pieces along the way, accrue knowledge, keep learning, and keep going. [...] Eventually, you'll reach a place in your life where you'll stop, glance over your shoulder, see the completed circle, and finally understand the reason why your journey took you down a strange path."

"It's strange to think we're brought up in a world that judges us for putting ourselves first. Somehow, to think of ourselves first and others second has come to sound so incredibly selfish - and that just makes my stomach churn and my teeth grind. How unfair! How misguided! Because here's what I've learned (and what no one seems to teach us in life): you have to make YOU a priority and think in terms of what's good for yourself and your higher interests. […] Instead of thinking of an action as selfish, with all the negative connotations that this word carries, I view it more positively as "looking after myself.""

"In a world that appears to indulge in negativity, I find we need to do our best to share the good. Too many shows, blogs, and newspapers spew pessimism, seemingly dedicated to tearing people down and picking them apart, piece by piece until there's nothing left. This horribly judgmental trend has no point, save for spite and harm. […] Rarely does anyone have anything nice to say anymore. It's a playground of sore shut-ins bitching and gossiping, where people drag others down for their own twisted entertainment. Thankfully […] goodness and kindness remain in abundance out there. Good people do exist, even if most of them are not known to the wider public and live their lives under the radar. […] We need to spread love, kindness, and empathy to the masses. […] Pause for a second and think of something nice to say instead of indulging in pointless negativity. […] And you watch: the more you do it, the more the kindness will spread out like a ripple."

"wildfire our love was like a wildfire it blazed and blazed and took down everything in its path but eventually every flame must go out"

"The only way to crack a real problem is to face it. Look your issues dead in the eye and sort out the beef between you."

"You're a bud covered in snow in the garden of your mind. Just wait for spring."

"And all of this is unfolding before my very eyes on an average day, begging the question: WHY. IS. EVERYONE. IN. SUCH. A. DAMN. HURRY? Why the constant rush?"

"Everyone thinks their monsters are visible to the world, but they're not - they're figments of our overblown imaginations, warped projections of our own self-image. Once you stop seeing them, they'll fully disappear. Yes, it's that easy."

"It's crazy what you'll see, hear, and feel if you stop and let the world continue to move around you for even just a minute. […] Basically I'm trying to pay attention. I mean, I have to force myself to do it through fits of angst, but the fire has been lit and here I am: trying to be mindful of my surroundings and the people around me. Noting the detail. […] I invite you to give it a try right now […] and be in the moment with yourself for a few minutes Try it."

"The future is as bright as you let it shine. Don't be tricked into seeing it dimly. Don't be fooled into believing that this, where you are right now, is all you get. Your potential is endless. Just act. Act now. Right now. Leap. Live. Love. What are you waiting for? Go. Get started. You're a special bunch and are going to do great things in the world."