Alison Bechdel Quotes

Mo: Uh... sorry. I was just wondering why you're... you know... using that if normally you just use crutches.
Thea: Well, the chair is so much more dramatic, don't you think? I use it when I want people to feel extra sorry for me.

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.

The more gratification we found in our own geniuses, the more isolated we grew... And in this isolation, our creativity took on an aspect of compulsion.

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.

I'm sure these things are true. But the way she says them feels like an implied criticism. As if she's comparing her own selflessness to my self-absorption. But of course that's just evidence of my self-absorption. My mother is probably not thinking anything like this. In fact, my desire to think that she's thinking of me at all is a bit pathetic.

Lois: Oh, you guys have enough to worry about with your careers and all. You don't need to hear about my problems.
Ginger: Are you kidding? I'd much rather hear about your problems than work on my dissertation.
Lois: Thank you, Ginger. Considering you'd rather fellate Bill Clinton than work on your dissertation, that's very generous.

On our second date, she kissed me in a bar. I invited her home. We just caught the F train, which seemed like a good omen.

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.

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!

"Mom, how come you never go outside?"
"I told you, I'm a vampire."

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 steaming off the wallpaper, digging up the dogwoods, polishing the finials... smelling of sawdust and sweat and designer cologne. But I ached as if he were already gone.

My homosexuality remained at that point purely theoretical, an untested hypothesis. But it was a hypothesise so thorough and so convincing I saw no reason not to share it immediately.

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

I did not draw a conscious parallel to my own sexuality, much less my father's. But the immersion — like green dishwashing liquid bathing a cuticle — left me supple and open to possibility.

Raffi: Okay, it's time to make another deposit to my therapy fund.