Alison Bechdel Quotes

Mo: I... y'know, um... I'm really attracted to you! [thought bubble:] Omigod! Who said that?!
Caption: A horrifying silence ensues. Is it an hour, or merely several seconds?
Harriet: I've had a crush on you for months.
Mo: Thank goddess! I was about to commit hara-kiri with my teaspoon!

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.

If there was ever a bigger pansy than my father, it was Marcel Proust.

Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice.

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

Ginger: Oh, jeez. Well, uh... maybe you should talk to someone.
Cynthia: I thought I was.

I’ll watch a movie only if it meets the following criteria: 1. It has to have at least two women in it. 2. Who talk to each other. 3. About something besides a man.

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. Though perhaps Camus' definition of the absurd — that the universe is irrational and human life meaningless — applies here as well. [quoting from The Myth of Sisyphus: The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd.]

Mo: Toni, come on! I know you're in a lot of pain, but you hafta look at the grand scheme of things! Listen, the environment is polluted beyond the point of no return, nickels and dimes are allocated for AIDS research while billions go into radar systems for blowing up civilians in the Persian Gulf, and we've got to spend the next two months being assaulted with hypocritical hype as two morally bankrupt white boys gear up for another electoral farce! Having a rough time in your relationship kinda pales in comparison, huh?
Toni: Gee, Mo... thanks. I can always count on you.

Language gets very confusing as it approaches this place where outside and inside touch.

Sydney: Imagine the cinematography if Ennis and Jack had been able to live together. Sweeping vistas of their couples therapist's office.

Your unconscious wants to express the pain you feel about your own lost innocence. But your ego wants to keep it repressed. To the compromise is anxiety.

I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture.

Your anxiety attach in the church sounds like a compromise formation.

A what?

Your unconscious wants to express the pain you feel about your own lost innocense. But your ego wants to keep it repressed. So the compromise is anxiety.

What if Icarus hadn't hurtled into the sea? What if he'd inherited his parent's inventive bent? What might have wrought?