Ann Bannon > Quotes

“Maybe I grew up too fast, maybe that's my trouble. I feel so lost out here...hung up between two worlds; half-kid and half-adult, half-boy and half-girl. And sometimes it seems like I get the dirty side of both.”
― Ann Bannon, Beebo Brinker

“It's not wrong, pal," he said to her back. "You've been brought up to think so. Most of us have. But who are they hurting? Nobody. They're just making each other happy. And you want their heads to roll because it makes you feel funny.”
― Ann Bannon, Beebo Brinker

“For the first time in her life she was proud of her size, proud of her strength, even proud of her oddly boyish face. She could see interest, even admiration in the faces of many of the girls.”
― Ann Bannon

“Does it ever happen that a nice girl is a Lesbian?" she asked him shyly.”
― Ann Bannon, Beebo Brinker

“God, Jack, it makes you want to go out and convert the whole damn world to homosexuality,” she told him. “Just so you can walk down the street with your head up. “Maybe”
― Lily Tomlin Ann Bannon, Beebo Brinker Omnibus: Ann Bannon's Pulp Classics

“She didn't want to be an out-and-out character any more than she wanted to be one of the herd, so Beth beat herself a path between the two.”
― Ann Bannon, Odd Girl Out

“God. I couldn’t have stood another minute of it. Straight people are so depressing.”
― Ann Bannon, I Am a Woman

“Marcie, you don’t need to read books. It’s just a bad habit for introverts.” Marcie shook her head silently while Laura went on. “Beautiful girls like you don’t need to read,” she said.”
― Ann Bannon, I am a Woman

“Are pants really that important?” Laura said. She said it sarcastically because she was afraid of her tears.”
― Ann Bannon, I Am a Woman

“I’m not beautiful either. But I’ve been loved. I know love and I can tell you, you don't have to be a beauty to feel passion. Sometimes it helps if you’re not. I wonder if you know that already.”
― Ann Bannon

“Marcie, you don’t need to read books. It’s just a dumb habit for introverts.”
― Ann Bannon, I Am a Woman

“I didn’t think they liked women in a place like this.”
Jack guided her to a barstool. “Oh, they’re friendly enough. They know you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t gay. They figure, you leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone.”
― Ann Bannon, I Am a Woman

“That wasn’t love.”
“What was it, then?”
“Just purely physical. Animal. Vulgar.”
“Love has a body, Laura. Eyes and lips, legs and sex. We humans can’t help that.”
― Ann Bannon, I Am a Woman

“Beebo folded it with the meticulous care you give to the oddments of life that happen to be in your hands when pain strikes; each fold careful, straight, and neat - as tidy as her life was not. There is an obscure comfort in smoothing a small piece of paper to its ultimate neatness. It seems a symbol of order and reason that must somehow rescue you from the chaos of suffering. It eased the misery that wants to pour out of your eyes and wail from your throat. ”
― Ann Bannon, Beebo Brinker

“Beth had taught Laura to look within herself, and what she found was a revelation.”
― Ann Bannon, I Am a Woman

“She could never be free from herself, but she could be free from her father, and at the moment that mattered most.”
― Ann Bannon, I Am a Woman