Erin Rozanski

“Compromise is often necessary [in politics], but entire marginalized identities are not expendable chess pieces.”
― Sarah McBride, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

“For many disabled people, there is also a specific type of intimacy, which Mia Mingus calls access intimacy. Access intimacy is not just for disabled people; it can also be experienced by many other people who might share experiences of marginalization, such as people of color or trans people. Mia describes access intimacy as “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level.”2 Mia goes on to talk about how it can happen with people with whom there are long-lasting relationships and people we’ve just met. Mia describes access intimacy also as the closeness that emerges from “an automatic understanding of access needs out of our shared similar lived experience of the many different ways ableism manifests in our lives.”
― Alex Iantaffi, Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

“At times Maharajji’s behavior reminds me of a story Ramakrishna tells of a saint who asked a snake not to bite but to love everyone. The snake agreed. But then many people threw things at the snake. The saint found the snake all battered. “I didn’t say not to hiss,” said the saint.”
― Ram Dass, Miracle of Love: Stories about Neem Karoli Baba

“But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions