Susan's Place Transgender Resources

What are your favorite quotes?

Mine is from the movie: The Matrix, most recently helps me in terms of dealing with denial (in terms of life).  In the movie, Neo's given a choice to join them (the people who work with Morpheus) or not when he's in the car with them (because they need cooperation from him to remove a bug put by the agents, and that required him being subjected to a scary process for them to remove it.)  Neo wants to know the truth about the Matrix, but in that moment he decides to leave and forget about everything and opens the door, and you can see a clean wide road that darkens in the distance (on a rainy night) , and then Trinity tells him this:

"You've been down there, Neo. You already know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be.""

He could have left at that moment, and gone down that road that he knows but takes him nowhere, but he would regret it later and always have that question on his mind.  In order to have the burning question of his life answered, he had to go down the hard road, the road less traveled, to find out. 

To me this alludes to the struggle that transgender people have in terms of coming to acceptance and coming out.  The wide road, the road of denying that one is transgender, goes nowhere as in being trapped in ones own life, and the road less traveled, coming out and going through the possible struggles of dealing with family and friends and employers as well as society, as the hard road but the road much more fulfilling. 

This is Cyrano's dying speech in the play Cyrano de Bergerac.

"There is one thing goes with me when tonight
I enter my last lodging, sweeping the bright
Stars from the blue threshold with my salute.
A thing unstained, unsullied by the brute
Broken nails of the world, by death, by doom
Unfingered - See it there, a white plume
Over the battle - A diamond in the ash
Of the ultimate combustion -
My Panache."

Edmond Rostand (Trans. Anthony Burgess)

Although in the play, the word 'panache' doesn't have the modern English meaning. The panache is a white plume, gleaming and unsullied it marks out the rank of general and gives them the authority and the power. However, it is also the thing that singles them out to enemy marksmen, it is their weakness. Earlier in the play, one of the characters dropped his panache in order to escape from a battle, it is not till he picks it up and puts it back in his belt that he redeems himself.

Essentially it's that one 'thing' that is the core of an individual, that makes them the very best of 'that person' they can be, but also exposes them terribly.

As he dies, Cyrano is celebrating that as much as it has hurt him, that piece of soul is intact.

From a very obscure West Coast band, in a song about abuse:

You can beat me, but you'll never beat me.

That, and I've always been fond of the bridge from Scarlet Begoinas by the Grateful Dead.

I ain't often right but I've never been wrong
It seldom turns out the way it does in the song
Once in a while you get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right

This one is often attribute to Dr. Seuss, but others claim it was stolen from "Shake Well Before Using: A New Collection of Impressions and Anecdotes Mostly Humorous" by Bennett Cerf.  Even if it was based on that quote it has been expanded and isn't a direct copy.

Quote from: Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka. Dr. Seuss)
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

We have this as a bumper sticker on the car and farm truck with a subtle rainbow banner below it.  We also have a large print of it on the partial wall that divides the kitchen from the dining area and is dead on visible when you walk in the garage door.

And you know what it is SO very true.

Women can't be understood - They just need to be loved.

What we can not feel, we do not understand.

It is only shallow people that do not judge by appearances. by O.W.

If the world got you down on your knees – You're in an excellent position for prayer and supplication.

It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind.

The Feminine is bountiful, but has her terrible aspect too if shunted aside and ignored.

The mind is like a parachute - It only works when its open.

We don't see things as they are - We see things as we are.

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Well there you go, now take your pick :-)

Axélle

I love quotes. Here's my top two, one serious:

"In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer." – Albert Camus

...and one humorous, yet completely true :laugh::

"That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen." -Charles Bukowski

Oh, and my signature, which is by Elliott Smith.

"She stood, in a room of crumbling plaster, pressed to the windowpane, looking up at the unattainable form of everything she loved. She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were:  This is not the world I expected." - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged


"My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride." - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

I have been so wrong that I am right

But actually my favourite is a scene not a quote,
It's the munchhausen barron, that, coming trough the centre of the earth from China, and lost in the middle of the ocean, seeing his own horse about to Drown, soon catch his Pigtail and stirr it up lifting his own body and the horse, and saving both.

When you're down grab your pride and lift it up to survive!

Quote from: Semiopathy on January 17, 2012, 02:15:36 PM
"She stood, in a room of crumbling plaster, pressed to the windowpane, looking up at the unattainable form of everything she loved. She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were:  This is not the world I expected." - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Wow, that is a powerful quote. Especially for those like myself who are fresh, scared, and struggling to understand how something like this could happen. "This is not the world I expected." Ain't that the truth? Perhaps I should take up my friends' advice and read that book! Thank you for posting it. I have a new one to add to my list of favorites!

-- There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

John Rogers

Although Ms. Rand does a first-rate job of demonstrating why really good books have editors.

Some of my favorites:

I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies - Pietro Aretino

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give - Winston Churchill

Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same - Unknown

When I asked for all things so that I could enjoy life...I was given life, so that I might enjoy all things - Unknown

We see the world as "we" are, not as "it" is; because it is the "I" behind the "eye" that does the seeing - Anaïs Nin

You have exactly one life in which to do everything you've ever wanted to do. Act accordingly - Colin Wright

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

-Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.
(Frank Herbert's Dune)