Lauren

“what you do to add to the human existence—that is what matters”
― Eddie Izzard, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens

“If you are an LGBT+ person and you come out, you have to go through your knight’s quest to create ground for yourself, to create a space for yourself, to stand there and say, “I exist. I have no reason to feel guilt or shame. I am proud to exist, and while I’m not perfect, I deserve to exist in society just like anyone else.”

This became my first big fight.

While I consider myself to be fantastically boring, I realized that if I took on my own sexual identity and came out and just told people about it and tried to have a chat with them—tried to be offhand and casual about it—and tried to build our place in society and humanity, then that would be a good mission. This is where I exist in society. I am just this guy. I am transgender, and I exist. But that is just my sexuality. More important than that is that I perform comedy, I perform drama, I run marathons, and I’m an activist in politics. These are the things I do. How you self-identify with your sexuality matters not one wit. What you do in life—what you do to add to the human existence—that is what matters. That is the beautiful thing.”
― Eddie Izzard, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens

“If you think you can’t do a thing, you will not be able to do it. If you think you can do something, then you have a chance of achieving it. Believing doesn’t mean you will instantly be able to, but you’ve got to believe that you can, otherwise you definitely won’t be able to do it. I’ve seen a number of people who I thought could do something brilliant and creative but they didn’t seem to believe in themselves and therefore didn’t, or couldn’t, do it.”
― Eddie Izzard, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens

“Play should never be allowed to interfere with work; and a life merely devoted to play is, of all forms of existence, the most dismal. But the joy of life is a very good thing, and while work is the essential in it, play also has its place.”
― Nick Offerman, Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers