Michelle

“Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“You all know I’m queer, but I still have to play the cool hijabi[…] The not too religious hijabi, the hijabi who can rock it with the alternative crowd, who won’t judge you, who will be accepting and tolerant, the Good Muslim. I’m in full on silent rant mode now. Unlike those Bad Muslims, the religious ones, the ones who are inconvenient in their practice, the ones you have to pause for as they break their fasts, the ones who have to step out to pray. The marginalized ones you would fight for, organize for, protest for, but would never be friends with, who you would studiously avoid at a brunch. I’m the cool hijabi only because you’re projecting your xenophobic narrow-mindedness, your lack of imagination of Muslims into me. You’re still projecting them. Your prejudices are still in the room. ”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“Queer indispensability?” Manal asks.
“It’s a concept I heard about at a play I went to a few months ago—a solo performance piece by a queer Sri Lankan trans man,” I tell her. “At one point, he talked about something he noticed, not only in himself, but in his queer friends and com“community—this way in which queer people tend to make themselves indispensable in their relationships and friendships. They’re so afraid of being left that they make themselves unleavable.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues