Bob Smith > Quotes

“It wasn't easy telling my family that I'm gay. I made my carefully worded announcement at Thanksgiving. It was very Norman Rockwell. I said, 'Mom, would you please pass the gravy to a homosexual?' She passed it to my father. A terrible scene followed.”
― Bob Smith

“Her smile was like a Samuel Beckett play - easy to read but difficult to interpret.”
― Bob Smith, Openly Bob: Candid and Wry Comic Essays on Gay Life in a Straight Society

“One of the many problems with aging is that you begin to think of yourself as a slob because your birthday suit can never be cleaned or pressed no matter how spotted or wrinkled it gets”
― Bob Smith, Remembrance of Things I Forgot

“Pam was a struggling artist who made everyone's life difficult. She only wore black and after becoming acquainted with her I couldn't decide if this was a deliberate fashion choice or whether it was physically impossible for any color to escape from the gravitational pull of her dark and bitter personality.”
― Bob Smith

“Since most parents are reluctant to talk about sex, schools have tried to fill the gap. In America, when we decide to ignore a subject, our favorite form of denial is to teach it incompetently. Familiarity without true understanding is not only the basis of our families but of our educational system as well.”
― Bob Smith, Openly Bob: Candid and Wry Comic Essays on Gay Life in a Straight Society

“The one undeniable benefit of having spent some time in the closet is that it nurtures a talent that you can fall back on any time: lying convincingly. Sometimes I worried that queer kids in the twenty-first century coming out at twelve, or even younger, would never develop that valuable skill.”
― Bob Smith, Remembrance of Things I Forgot

“Love at first sight makes perfect sense because we're all pressed for time.”
― Bob Smith, Selfish and Perverse

“Narrow-minded historians will say there's no proof that [Meriwether] Lewis was dude-loving. Another telling indication was that his Newfoundland dog was named "Seaman". Talk about a Freudian slip. What straight man like to go around saying "Seaman, come! Seaman, come!" amid a group of strapping beefcake?”
― Bob Smith, Treehab: Tales from My Natural, Wild Life

“The chilling thought occurred to me that breaking up with someone you love to criticize might be the only way to save yourself from becoming unlovable”
― Bob Smith, Remembrance of Things I Forgot

“Books have been vastly important in my life - as both a reader and a writer. I've learned that the great gift of literature is that someone else's tale becomes a chapter of your story. And I still feel books are the best art form for making contact with another consciousness, which is why reading a good book by yourself never feels lonely.”
― Bob Smith, Treehab: Tales from My Natural, Wild Life

“Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.”
― Bob Smith

“I'm bored, lalalallalalala OLLI OXEN SOMETHING"!!”
― Bob Smith

“If the goal of conservatives is to discourage young people from having sex, they should change their strategy and push to make comprehensive sexual education compulsory. Our educational system has proved that if a subject is taught in a boring enough manner, Americans will make every effort to avoid it for the rest of their lives. If homosexuality was taught in the same manner as trigonometry, even most gay people would have no use for it after graduation.”
― Bob Smith

“I think she’ll like me,” I said, concerned that my own mother wouldn’t like me. My fear exposed the unspoken shame of all families: if you didn’t know the people you were related to, would you befriend them? In the days when families hunted and gathered, this wouldn’t be a question worth pondering, but once butchering a mammoth stopped being a household chore, we began to suspect families are chain gangs held together by manacles of DNA.”
― Bob Smith, Remembrance of Things I Forgot: A Novel

“You’ll support a Republican president in twenty years who’s worse than Reagan,” I explained. “Worse than Reagan?” Junior asked. “How’s that possible?” “Evolution. In the future assholes will be much larger than they are today.”
― Bob Smith, Remembrance of Things I Forgot: A Novel

“The furniture in the house had the same relationship to real furnishings that drag queens have to real women. Everything was a parody, done either with affection or cruelty.”
― Bob Smith, Openly Bob: Candid and Wry Comic Essays on Gay Life in a Straight Society

“His ready answer impressed me, reiterating my belief that one of the reasons I required a boyfriend was to halve my ignorance and double my chances of understanding the world and myself.”
― Bob Smith