Alison Bechdel Quotes

Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.

Lois: Good coffee, huh?
Emma: Lois, I think you're a very attractive woman and I'd like to sleep with you.
Lois: [chokes] Gak! Ahem! You don't - coff - fool around, do you?
Emma: No, but I'd like to.

I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it; two, two women talking to each other, and three, talking about something besides a man

I had failed some unspoken initiation rite,
And life's possibilities were no longer infinite

"I was adrift on the high seas, but my course was becoming clear. It lay between the scylla of my peers and the swirling, sucking charybdis of my family. Veering toward scylla seemed much the safer route, and after navigating the passage, I soon washed up, a bit stunned, on a new shore. Like Odysseus on the island of the cyclops, I found myself facing a "being of colossal strength and ferocity, to whom the law of man and god meant nothing." In true heroic fashion, I moved toward the thing I feared. Yet while Odysseus schemed desperately to escape Polyphemus's cave, I found that I was quite content to stay here forever."

It's a world gone mad! Pacifists paying for boot camp! Feminists learning to pole dance! Geeks flipping tractor tires! And the trends keep coming!

She has given me a way out.

It was a vicious cycle, though. The more gratification we found in our own geniuses, the more isolated we grew.

Lois: [intercepting a man in the women's bookstore] Can I help you find something, sir?
Man: Um... just browsing.
Lois: Hmm... I find that publication rather tame myself. Have you ever seen this one? This month there's a hot photo spread of three totally tattooed babes with strap-ons doing an armpit shaving scene. And if you're looking for a real thrill, check out the story, "She Came in Waves," in this new female ejaculation anthology!
Man: 'Scuse me, I think I left my car at a hydrant.

If it weren't for the unconventionality of my desires, my mind might never have been forced to reckon with my body.

It could be argued that death is inherently absurd, and that grinning is not necessarily an inappropriate response. I mean absurd in the sense of ridiculous, unreasonable. One second a person is there, the next they're not.

Clarice: [getting cold feet] There's still time!
Toni: We can just call everyone and say we're terribly sorry but something came up and we have to leave town!
Clarice: ...But what about the five gallons of baba ganoush, and all those tofu pups?
Toni: Shit. I forgot. Well, I guess we'll just have to go through with it, then.

The sudden approximation of my dull, provincial life to a New Yorker cartoon was exhilarating.

Lois: Hey, Ginger! Are you masturbating in there or what? I wanna show you something!
Ginger: [in the tub] If I'm masturbating, will you leave me alone?
Lois: No! Check it out. How do I look?
Ginger: Like a white girl in a black bra.

Of course I’m delighted that Fun Home has met with such success, but it still strikes me as very unlikely that an odd, cerebral story about a lesbian and her closeted gay suicidal mortician father would have struck a chord with anyone but me.