REY

“My chin ached and trembled. "You know," I told them, "I've been searching for you all for such a long time. I can't believe I've finally found you." I squeezed Ruth tightly in my arms as we both cried.
Esperanza rested her hand on my thigh. "Do you know what my name means?"
I shook my head. "No, but it sure is pretty."
She smiled and looked at me with a sure, unwavering expression. "Esperanza," she explained-- "it means hope.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I hurried out to the pond to catch polywogs in a jar. I leaned on my elbow and looked up close at the little frogs that climbed up on the sun-baked rocks.

"Caw, caw!" A huge black crow circled above me in the air and landed on a rock nearby. We looked at each other in silence.

"Crow, are you a boy or a girl?"

"Caw, caw!"

I laughed and rolled over on my back. The sky was crayon blue. I pretended I was lying on the white cotton clouds. The earth was damp against my back. The sun was hot, the breeze was cool. I felt happy. Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“Yearning," I repeated softly. "What a beautiful word to hear a butch say out loud.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind