gum

“Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“لم أستطع أن أصبح أي شيء، لم أستطع أن أصبح حتى شريرا. ولا خبيثا ولا طيبا، ولا دنيئا ولا شريفا، لا بطلا، ولا حشرة، وأنا اليوم في هذا الركن الصغير، أختم حياتي، محاولا أن اواسي نفسي بعزاء لا طائل فيه، قائلا أن الرجل الذكي لا يفلح قط في أن يصبح شيئا، وأن الغبي وحده يصل إلى ذلك”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“Reviewing the literature on love I noticed how few writers, male or female, talk about the impact of patriarchy, the way in which male domination of women and children stands in the ways of love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain—I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion. I would've destroyed myself. And a wise old queen—Bobo, we called her—taught me that I had a duty to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see. Poor Bobo came to a sticky end - he was riding in the Duke Devanche's Hispano Suissa when his falling hemorrhoids blew out of the car and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstry. Even the eyes and the brain went with a horrible "shlupping" sound. The Duke says he would carry that ghastly "shlup" with him to his mausoleum.”
― William S. Burroughs, Queer