Jennifer Finney Boylan > Quotes

“As it turns out, we're all still learning to be men, or women, all still learning to be ourselves. pg 197”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“I have a different theory, which is even more harebrained. It goes like this: Maybe we should all just love one another, even if we don't completely understand the things that people bear in their dark, strange hearts, even if the stars that other men and women are following seem invisible to us. If we make ourselves open to the humanity of others first, maybe understanding will follow. An incomprehensible theory of the universe isn't necessary if your only ambition is to embrace another soul. What you need, maybe all you need, in fact, is the willingness to love.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“Maybe . . . it's easier to have enemies than not to have them. . . . If you don't hate people, you have to learn to like them. . . . And liking people? That's not easy.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror

“...I really did "choose" to be Jim every single day, but that once I put my sword down I haven't chosen Jenny at all; I simply wake up and here I am.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“Although my understanding of exactly how much trouble I was in grew more specific over time, as a child I surely understood enough about my condition to know it was something I'd better keep private. By intuition I was certain that the thing I knew to be true was something others would find both impossible and hilarious. My conviction, by the way, had nothing to do with a desire to be feminine, but it had everything to do with being female. Which is an odd believe for a person born male. It certainly had nothing to do with whether I was attracted to girls or boys. This last point was the one that, years later, would most frequently elude people, including the overeducated smarty-pants who constituted much of my inner circle. But being gay or lesbian is about sexual orientation. Being transgedered is about identity.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“I feel like somebody who just got out of prison after 40 years for something she didn't do, like I got pardoned by the governor. When dear friends deal with me with mixed emotions, it is a little like being told, 'Well, Jenny, we're glad you got sprung, really, but quite honestly we did kind of like you better when you were in jail.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“Having an opinion about transsexuality is about as useful as having and opinion on blindness. You can think whatever you like about it, but in the end, your friend it still blind and surely deserves to see.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“...a memoir is meant to be an impression of life, and not a photograph.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted

“And at every moment as I lived my life, I countered this awareness with an exasperated companion thought, namely, Don’t be an idiot. You’re not a girl. Get over it. But I never got over it.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“Monster a person though monster not human.
Monster like music. Like Beatles! Like Schumann!
World full of stupid. World full of noise.
Monster feel ANGRY. No birthday. No joys.
World full of JUNK monster not comprehend.
What is a childhood? What is a friend?
Monster and human both want the same.
Want conversation. Want love. WANT NO PAIN.
If monster speak heart: monster life only worsen.
Monster not human: BUT MONSTER A PERSON!”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror

“Maybe we should just love one another, even if we don't completely understand the things that people bear in their dark, strange hearts, even if the stars that other men and women are following seem invisible to us. If we make ourselves open to the humanity of others first, maybe understanding will follow. An incomprehensible theory of the universal isn't necessary if your only ambition is to embrace another soul. What you need, maybe all you need, in fact, is the willingness to love.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“I think it's very human, the hope that an all-encompassing love will change us into someone else, someone better. That this hope usually turns out to be false makes it no less human; the world is full of hopes far more unlikely than being transformed by love.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“Don't you know that this is the only reason we are here, to love one another, and to be loved? Why is it that what is so obvious to dogs is such a mystery to men and women?”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs

“You carry the past with you. Even if there's a before, and an after, in your life. It's still the same life. The trick is to build a bridge between that and what comes later.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“Anybody can buy. It takes an artist to shop.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan

“Is there anything more fundamentally human than the desire to live in another world, as someone other than our own earthbound selves?”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“It makes me wonder just how many supposedly brave people in the world are just men and women trying to imitate someone more courageous than themselves.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“How much could the person you love change, and still remain the same person to whom you'd made your promise? We don't expect our lovers to remain the same over the course of a long relationship. In fact, if you're married at sixty-five to the same person you married when you were twenty, your marriage has probably failed. But there are changes, over time, that spell doom for a marriage, although exactly what these are, and to what degree, varies from couple to couple. For some people, vast changes over time make no difference to the fundamental sense of devotion one soul has for another. But for others, relatively small changes can push things to the breaking point: gaining or losing weight, gaining or losing faith, gaining or losing wealth. How does any relationship survive in the end, when change is the only constant?”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“Which is to say that we all have dragons to slay in life. This one is mine. I hope that doing so will provide a model to others on how to find the bravery to be true to oneself, even if it means doing something that seems impossible.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“There are times when I think it's impossible to know another soul. I don't know, maybe we're lucky that way. If we knew what really went on inside other people's private hearts it would make our eyeballs bleed.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“It's funny how you can know a person, think of him as your closest friend, and still never gain access to the secret chambers in his heart.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“The problem is - we own our lives, sure. But our lives don’t belong only to us.

And yet, we are here to tell our stories in this way to make sense of our lives. So how do you tell a story when you know that telling it will bring other people sorrow? Is it better, in the end, to just be silent?”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs

“If you want to understand something, you first need to accept the fact of your own ignorance. And then, you need to talk to people who know more than you do, people who have not just thought about the facts but lived them”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Mad Honey

“Straight women love a feminine sensibility in a man, but that love only goes up to, and unfortunately does not quite pass, the fact of his being an actual woman.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“I wondered ...if meeting people with creativity and passion when you were at an impressionable enough age actually kind of ruined you for life among normal people.

For a long time, I'd searched the world, thinking I could start up new friendships like the ones I'd had before. But I never met people like that again. I know people will think that's what everyone believes about their college friends, but it's true. Maybe we're like flowers that open up at that brief moment in our lives, and after that, we close up again, one by one.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil

“gay and lesbian people don’t necessarily have that much in common with transsexuals.” “Yeah,” I said. “Except for the fact that we get beaten up by the same people.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“Probably no people embrace change more enthusiastically, at least in theory, than Americans. Who we are at birth is less important to us than who we will become. We are expected—indeed, obligated—not just to be, but to become.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“Is it? I thought. Is it really better if I talk about it? Isn’t keeping this hidden the only way I can protect you, can protect this family? Isn’t that my job, taking care of us? Sometimes you can do that better with silence than with words.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“Sometimes my sister and I laugh so hard that we fall upon the floor, unable to speak or move, just shaking so hard that it is not clear if we are going to be able to survive our own happiness. It makes it hard to breathe.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs

“Most of the time I just have to resign myself to the fact that this whole business is beyond comprehension for most straight people. If you’re not trans, you’re free from thinking about what gender you are in the same way that white people in America are generally free from having to think about what race they are.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders