“The laws of genetics apply even if you refuse to learn them.”

“...I realize that lessons are meant to be learned, honored even, or else you can spend your life running so far from them that you erect a false existence around the very thing you should be embracing.”

“Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.”

“Did you learn to dress that way in Leather for Bad Boys one-oh-one?”

“Never give anyone the satisfaction of denying you something you need, and for that, what you have to do is to learn to need nothing. Starve the wanting part of you. Dorothy Allison, “Mama” Trash”

“You learned that if you're tired enough, you can sleep sitting up. That the unendurable is perfectly endurable if you just take it a minute at a time, and when the alternative is no more minutes ever...”

“I am the woman who lost herself but now is found, the lesbian, outside the law of the church and man, the one who has to love herself or die. If you are not as strong as I am, what will be make together? I am all muscle and wounded desire, and I need to know how strong we both can be.”