Lou Sullivan > Quotes

“I wanna look like what I am but don't know what someone like me looks like. I mean, when people look at me I want them to think-- there's one of those people that reasons, that is a philosopher, that has their own interpretation of happiness. That's what I am.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“I finally said, "Let's put it this way: I'd rather lose you than stop my shots.""You mean that chemical is more important to you than I am?""No, I am more important to me than you are.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“I took a certain pleasure in informing the gender clinic that even though their program told me I could not live as a Gay man, it looks like I'm going to die like one.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work

“A big fear of mine is that I will die before the gender professionals acknowledge that someone like me exists, and then I really won't exist to prove them wrong.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“It really hasn't hit me that I am about to die. I see the grief around me, but inside I feel serene and a certain kind of peace. My whole life I've wanted to be a gay man and it's kind of an honor to die from the gay men's disease.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it.”
― Louis Sullivan

“My opened shirt blew in the wind—The sun tanning my stomach—Feeling lean and alive and beautiful—Saying I am a man—Saying I love men.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan

“He said my ambiguity was one of the few things that made me "interesting." Afterwards I cried while talking with Charles about it, saying I don't want to be interesting, I want to be happy.”
― Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“I don't even know if there was anyone that's ever felt as I do.. how they coped, what they did...how do I find out what someone like me does?”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“You told me I couldn't live as a gay man, but now I am going to die as one.”
― Lou Sullivan

“The mind of the transsexual cannot be changed”
― Lou Sullivan, From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland

“Jack struggled throughout his life to maintain his male identity, yet in a final symbol of rejection by family and society, and a final assault upon his body, this little old gray-haired man was buried in a woman’s white satin dress”
― Lou Sullivan, From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland

“Mom said I could maybe have a Beatles haircut before the last day of school.

Paul-

Ringo-

Paul-

Ringo they keep bouncing around my head. Model yourself on them and you'll have no worries. Paul! I love the name. Such a beautiful sound to the ear. Ringo! Such an adorable boy. So sweet and modest. So bouncy. Know that I love you and I'm not crazy. This is a love so strong and real. Oh, love me too, anyone.”
― Lou Sullivan

“Dear Diary,
I wish I had a boy to take me skating and to talk to. But I'm too young. I wish I'd grow up. This year I'm counting on my period. Well good night! I hope we become good friends.”
― Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“I just don’t think I write enough on how much I enjoy life lately. This change, this SEX CHANGE that is supposed to be so weird, has in reality made me feel LESS weird. I can relax + laugh + not THINK before I say or do something + it all comes out right + I’m relaxed
+ I think, “My God, if they only knew…”
― Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“I'd buy him jewelry and flowers and wine, scarves, perfumes, strawberries.”
― Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“I need something so badly but I’ll never find out what it is I need. I’m tired of old thoughts, old actions, old thoughts all the time. Rotting in my mind, in my body, rotting poetry, rotting, smelling, and now to the point where it is becoming one with all the other rot in the world. It has no distinctness, no goodness anymore. Rot has taken over every part of me.”
― Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“This life-and-death matter just doesn’t seem to have answers.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“But I haven't a lover, and one who may materialize between now and then may not be close enough to my heart to merit those last moments with me.
How do I want to die?”
― Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“It has to do with relating to someone from the groundwork of our basic physical sexuality. As long as the naked body elicits responses from men and women, there will be transsexuals.”
― Lou Sullivan, From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland

“people cannot associate beauty with males unless introducing homosexuality into it.”
― Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“Is sex reassignment surgery moral/right? ''If a patient came to you and wanted you to remove his normal left eye or his right hand,
would you do that, just because he asked you to?''
A patient who comes in with such a request is, on the face of it, acutely psychotic. Transsexuals are not psychotic. Further, transsexuals do not want a useful organ removed, reducing their efficiency; but they want a more or less (to them) useless sexual
equipment altered so that a more or less useful (to them) equipment will result.”
― Louis Graydon Sullivan, Information for the Female-to-Male Cross Dresser and Transsexual