Alison Bechdel Quotes

I don't think your family was a very safe place to be a little girl.

Mo: My sister-in-law had her baby! I'm an aunt! My brother's a father! My mother's a grandma! My dad's a...
Sydney: I think I can generalize from there.

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

At thirteen, I was so paralyzed with self-consciousness that sometimes I'd get home from school and realize I hadn't spoken out loud all day. Later, I would blame my social awkwardness on my homosexuality. But now I speculate that being a lesbian actually saved me... If it weren't for the unconventionality of my desires, my mind might never have been forced to reckon with my body.

Harriet: [making an excuse] Um... I'm looking for a copy of The Wheat-Free Guide to Creative Visualization in Co-dependent Past-Life Relationships.
Mo: Huh. Jeez, I never heard of that one... Wonder if it's in spirituality or cooking.

But how could he admire Joyce’s lengthy, libidinal ‘yes’ so fervently and end up saying ‘no’ to his own life? I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one’s erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect.
Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.

Sparrow: Oh my God. I'm a trained professional. I can't believe I didn't see it sooner! The mind games... the use of isolation... the accusations about being unfaithful... the obsessive keeping track... preventing the other person from getting a job... Stuart, we're in an abusive relationship with the Bush administration!

Rich is not writing about transcending this world...
But about transforming it. Here, and now. And what hope do we have of changing the world if we can't change our sorry-ass selves? As wisdom tends to do, the poem reveals something very simple that's been here all along: We are not the center of everything. But we are a part of everything.

Mo: The man's clearly a sex addict. He's out of control. Lying, suborning perjury...
Sydney: It's this puritanical culture that's the problem. Do people really expect someone with the ruthless lust for power it takes to become president to spend evenings at home with his stamp collection?
Mo: Oh, please! You wouldn't be quite so indulgent if it was Newt Gingrich getting blowjobs in the Oval Office.
Sydney: Thank you for that image.

Mo: Ginger, how can you think about sex at a time like this? Madmen are about to destroy the earth!
Ginger: Can you think of a better time? I don't know about you, girl, but I want to have a G-spot orgasm before Armageddon hits.

It’s true that he didn’t kill himself until I was nearly twenty. But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb. He really was there all those years, a flesh-and-blood presence smelling of sawdust and sweat and designer cologne. But I ached as if he were already gone.

"This is one of my difficulties now... my fear that Mom will find this memoir about her "angry." Another difficulty is the fact that the story of my mother and me is unfolding even as I write it."

The maples had sheltered the west side of our house for over a hundred years, and left, as fallen trees do, a void so absolute you couldn't possibly have imagined it beforehand.

There are two ways to surpass your parents. Ones is to achieve the thing they had hoped for. One is somewhat easier: just to live longer.

Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.