Bill Konigsberg Quotes
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A thought came to me. What do I think about the date with Rafe? Here I am thinking about what everyone else would think, and I haven’t taken even a second to have my own reaction. Weird.
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Acceptance is an affirmation that you’re good enough.
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Like, did you know that LGBT kids are 8.4 times more likely than straight kids to attempt suicide? And 50 percent of LGBT kids are rejected by their parents? That between 20 and 40 percent of homeless teens say they’re gay, lesbian, or transgender, and that up to 50 percent of the guy teens have sold their bodies to support themselves?
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Anyway, my whole thing is, whatever path I'm on, I'm on. I'm not going to avoid it because it's harder for the world, or even harder for me. I'm like, I gotta be me, you know?
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You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn't feel good.
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And I think, What’s the opposite of suffocation?
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The world will make you vulnerable. If you're acting like you're not, that's what you're doing.
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I mean, if you accept something, you take it for what it is. Tolerance is different. Less.
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Guilt, she’d explained, was useful because a person could learn from it and do the right thing next time. Shame, on the other hand, was useless.
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That never even occurred to me, that he had feelings.
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The hole in my heart, I can’t even begin to describe. It’s hard when you open your heart and let someone in and then suddenly they’re not in it anymore. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is; that empty spot stings so bad that you want to find any kind of relief, or wrap yourself up so tight you can’t feel it anymore. I knew it might be there a little while. Or maybe even a long while. For both of us.
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I was thinking about how snakes shed their skin every year, and how awesome it would be if people did that too. In lots of ways, that’s what I was trying to do.
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Actually, tolerance and acceptance are different. To tolerate seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn't it?
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It’s not, like, denial? In the GSA we joke that bi guys are just gay guys who aren’t ready to admit it yet.
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And it's hard to express the truth when the world wants you to be someone else.
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I had the strong sensation that I'd underestimated my parents and their devotion to me. Of course they'd be on my side, whether they understood or not. That was just the kind of parents they were.
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I knew that she was right, obviously. But part of me didn't want to. I wanted to have someone to call my own so badly that I just couldn't let it go.