Varian

“I've been mad at the world for a long time. It’s hard not to be mad at the world when you're eleven years old and everyone you know is suffering, when your mother cries herself to sleep and you can recognize your father's hospital room by the smell of his blood. But the summer before my sophomore year, I learned my great-great-grandfather was a socialist, and suddenly I had the words for why I wanted to bum it all down. Because none of this is real. It's real but it ain't real, it ain't real the way mountains or the rings inside a tree are real. You can't open a book on the laws of physics and find a chapter labeled "Exploiting Workers for Profit and Killing Them When They Ask You to Stop." It's fake! Someone made it up! Workers are exploited, rent is astro-nomical, the cost of healthcare is life-destroying not because they are the path a river carves through a canyon, but because some capitalist fuckers decided they wanted it this way.”
― Andrew Joseph White, Compound Fracture

“I do not get to savor the masculine cut of my clothes, or the illusion of short hair, or the feeting joy of my skin feeling like mine. Instead, I have to worry if my boyhood is convincing enough to keep me safe.

There is no joy in that. Only fear.”
― Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

“When something terrible happens—or at least, when you learn about it—it feels like it should affect the entire world. It feels like something should change. But it doesn’t.”
― Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

“Halfway through the walk, I pull off my mask. There's nobody to hide from anymore. It's like changing out of the dress I ran in, like watching snips of dark auburn hair gather around my feet. Not quite sure what to do with myself, desperately trying to understand this new body. Trying to figure it out: What does it mean? What does this flesh want? What does the world want from it?
What kind of monster do I want to be?
At least a face like this will make people think twice before making snap judgments about what I am. It's harder for someone to pin you down as a girl when they need a moment to pin you down as human.”
― Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us