Daniel M. Lavery > Quotes

“As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Even if I never read another book, I’m still a person with intrinsic value, and later I’ll be a river.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“frosting emergencies are just as real as other kinds of emergencies”
― Mallory Ortberg, Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters

“It was one thing to be a man, or wish to be a man, or live as a man, in a coffee shop or with a friend or alone in my apartment or out in public, but to be a man in relation with my mother meant being not-her-daughter.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“-I WOULD BREATHE FOR YOU MY JANE
JANE WHERE HAVE YOU GONE
I AM BEREFT WITHOUT MY JANE
I SHALL SINK INTO ROGUERY

-i am with my cousins

-WHICH COUSIN
IS IT THE SEXY ONE

-Please don't try to talk to me again

-IS IT YOUR SEXY COUSIN
"ST. JOHN"
WHAT KIND OF NAME IS ST. JOHN

-I'm not going to answer that

-I KNEW IT
DID YOU LEAVE BECAUSE OF MY ATTIC WIFE
IS THAT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT

-yes
Absolutely

-BECAUSE MY HOUSE IN FRANCE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE AN ATTIC
IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WERE WORRIED ABOUT
IT HAS A CELLAR THOUGH SO YOU KNOW
DON'T CROSS ME
HAHA I'M ONLY JOKING”
― Mallory Ortberg, Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters

“I do not have any of even the littlest hard feelings all of my feelings about you are just so soft and so normal just normal soft feelings that you’re going to love”
― Mallory Ortberg, Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters

“Is there anything gayer than refusing to ask someone out, then holding them personally responsible for the silent, ever-increasing intensity of your feelings until they tell you casually they’re going on a date with someone who asked them out, then exploding with despair? Almost certainly, but no one will tell me what it is.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Chapter Eleven: In Which I Interview Every Man Who Refused to Walk Through a Door I Held Open for Them Before Transition and Inform Them that They Are Retroactively Gay Now”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“what is a dream but a series of lies designed to keep us immobilized in a dark room for hours at a time”
― Mallory Ortberg, Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters

“I mean, if I were thirty years younger—if I were twenty five years younger—if I were eighteen years younger—God, if I were just ten years younger—if I were a year and a day younger—if I were a month younger—if you'd asked me just five minutes ago, four and a half even, if I'd picked up on the first ring instead of the third, I'd transition. Hell, I'd transition. Oh my God, I wish I could transition. Ask me again, but sooner. Come back yesterday. Come back a week ago. What good are you to me now, when I'm—this? Where were you when there was still summer in my heart? Come back a month ago, a decade, but come back to before I had to forgive you. Just come back and ask again; I'll wait if it takes forever this time.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Kids, Daddy used to have the greatest rack in the tristate area.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Transition had not always been true of me, but I found that the more place I allowed it in my life, the further back it cast its roots. Whether or not the birthright had been mine to begin with or ever intended for me, I found the burden easy and the yoke light.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“I had grown comfortable at the thought of my body as a public resource that I was responsible for holding in trust. I had been charged with its maintenance and general upkeep, and on the strength of such a relationship had been able to develop a certain vague fondness for it, while also maintaining a pleasant distance. Don’t ask me; I just work here, was my attitude. I can let the supervisors know when there’s a problem and they tell me how to fix it.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Trying not to transition was the hardest work in the world. The nicest thing about transition was letting go.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“I often described my sudden shift in self-awareness as feeling as if a demon had entered my room in the middle of the night, startled me awake by whispering, "What if you were a man, sort of?" into my ear, then slithered out the window before I could ask any follow-up questions.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“are you up
if so do you want to play frisbee and die for each other
—Hyacinthus to Apollo, ibid.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Trans people: Always mesmerized, held, fascinated, and ultimately defeated by reflective surfaces. What's that, you say? A mirror of some kind? Hold it up to me so I might gaze at it with longing and dissatisfaction.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Chapter Thirteen: In Which I Rescue Masculinity by Taking Up Weight Lifting, Heroically It’s subversive and important when I do it.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Resolutely cheerful, unrepentantly sentimental, unfortunately prone to Peter Pan syndrome, in a bafflingly nonspecific relationship with a tall, beautiful woman, deeply enthusiastic about terrible hobbies, a tendency toward overdressing, neglectful or at the least careless of his health—Gomez Addams could have walked out of a pamphlet on trans-specific medical care from Vancouver Coastal Health.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“On the one hand, here is death: stagnant, permanent, immobilized, silent, unvarying, inactive, formless, characterless, shrinking, constrictive, irreversible. On the other hand, here is transition: active, forceful, adaptable, energetic, animated, expansive, full of possibility, capacious, comprehensive, vital, ambitious.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“There is a certain type of beautiful boy who plays Ultimate Frisbee and invites you to come watch his game,” I said, “not because he is vain and self-centered, although he maybe is, but because it is the only way he knows how to invite someone to share in his particular joy, and I think maybe the only thing I have ever wanted is to be a very beautiful, very dead, gentle boy that everyone gathers around and looks at.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“She could not understand how she was here, when she had never said yes to being brought anywhere. She could not remember speaking to him, much less agreeing. She was beginning to learn the danger of silence, and that someone who wishes to hear a yes will not go out of his way to listen for a no.”
― Mallory Ortberg, The Merry Spinster

“Do you have trans on the menu? Is it possible to get a cup instead of a bowl? What's the smallest amount of trans you have available? I'll take that.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Nobody is asking me to apologize for anything, but I still want to, if only for the pleasure and the sweetness and the release of being forgiven.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“The idea of tending to anything that belonged to me—my home, my clothes, my appearance—was unbearable, because everything at that time depended on my not having a body. Washing the dishes meant acknowledging that I had hands to wash them with, a stomach to fill, a hunger to address, a body to nourish.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Here is the other Mode of Gay Feeling: You still look fantastic, but your stomach hurts and you will never get out of bed. You have learned that rolling your sleeves up over your forearms is very useful to you, sexually speaking, but the person you love and the people you sleep with have absolutely nothing in common, including what they think of your forearms.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“As soon as I allowed myself to consider the possibility of transition, not as it related to other people but as it related to me, I had to fight not to transition every day.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Everyone with a lick of sense loves Morticia, but what is Gomez Addams, besides “an obviously transsexual man”?”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“Being a woman is hard, but I was good at it, I think is the underlying anxiety. Nobody fired me; I quit. I know I'm not trying to look pretty anymore, and I apologize to all those who have to look at me, because I used to try and I'm not enough of a man yet for it to not be a problem. I promise to work very hard to look like Victor Garber so you can look at a handsome man in three years' time minimum.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“I expect it's hard for witches ... now that most people work in shops and factories, and haven't any crops to ruin. They must be terribly sad, those witches, to have to go from blighting wheat fields to blighting houseplants.”
― Mallory Ortberg, The Merry Spinster