Quotes from Openly Straight

“It’s hard to be different,” Scarborough said. “And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“The world needs people who are more comfortable standing still. We keep the earth on it axis when everybody else is bouncing around.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“The hole in my heart, I can’t even begin to describe. It’s hard when you open your heart and let someone in and then suddenly they’re not in it anymore. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is; that empty spot stings so bad that you want to find any kind of relief, or wrap yourself up so tight you can’t feel it anymore. I knew it might be there a little while. Or maybe even a long while. For both of us.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn’t feel good.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Guilt is about something you do. Shame is about who you are.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“We were dancers and drummers and standers and jugglers, and there was nothing anyone needed to accept or tolerate. We celebrated.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where no one thought being gay was even something to ride someone about?”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Straight people have it so much easier. They don’t understand. They can’t. There’s no such thing as openly straight.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Do you know how you get the urge to clean your room, and it’s no big deal? But when your mom tells you that you have to clean your room, you don't want to? That's me, anyway.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Why can’t I just be bad?” I asked, figuring my mom would have no idea what I was talking about.
“Well, that’s easy, sweetie. You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn’t feel good.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Is this your boyfriend?" the first nun asked.
Clair Olivia looked me up and down. “No. This is my gay friend who decided he was straight and single-handedly wrecked havoc at an all-boys school in Massachusetts this fall. He’s gay again and home for Christmas, so yay!”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“What do you call it when a straight person comes out? ... A conversation”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“I had the strong sensation that I'd underestimated my parents and their devotion to me. Of course they'd be on my side, whether they understood or not. That was just the kind of parents they were.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“That was the thing about Ben. He could get away with saying shit like that. I totally couldn’t. I wasn’t big or masculine enough. In my mind, anyway. But Ben could get all agape on your ass, and you’d just sit there like, huh. Agape. Interesting.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Straight people don't have to think every time they talk, about whether they are coming out. We do. That might be hard, but that's also why we have to come out. if we don't, it's pretty much impossible to have a conversation about anything beyond the weather without lying. we really have no choice, do we ?”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Wow. Did I just write that? I didn't want who I am to come between us? How could I not have seen that?”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Then Albie reached into his pocket and pulled out one shiny Jonathan apple.
“Hungry?” he asked us.
“How’d you do that?” I asked, wondering when he’d had time to pocket an apple.
“Oh, I have four of them,” he said, patting his megalarge pockets. “Next time you won’t laugh when I tell you to watch Survival Planet.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Then I wondered if that was what this was, like a Brokeback Mountain thing. We’d sleep in the same bed for a year, and finally we’d do it, but we’d never talk about it, ever, and then Ben would get married and I’d be killed in Texas.
Probably not, but you can never be too careful with these things.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“It needs to be said that sometimes my mom forgets important details when she talks. Like the time she told us she was considering leather (couches, it turns out), or when I was little and she said, "Here's a napkin to put your balls in" (the Atomic Fireballs that I was eating, she meant).”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“We were at a swap meet in Cochituate last year, and there was this Boy Scout troop with a sign that read, 'Help Boy Scouts, Blind Kids.' Toby saw it, and he grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me away. I asked what was wrong, and with this scared expression on his face, he said, "That's not right. They need to be stopped.'

I cracked up. 'Oh, no,' I said.

'When I asked him why helping blind kids and Boy Scouts was bad, Toby's whole face went white. He said, 'Forget it. Let's go.' But I had to know what the hell he was talking about, so I made him walk back over with me. We looked at the sign together, and finally he mumbled, 'I didn't see the comma.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“I think anyone who stops at a gas station at night is up to no good. I think that if cops want to stop drunk driving, they should hide out in the bushes at the Taco Bell drive-through. I think if you're a guy and you pull down your pants and the girl you're with starts texting, you have a small penis.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“As I said, it wasn't even a gay thing. But it made me think how hard some kids have it with their families. Me, I could show up as Lady GaGa dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, and Mom would be like, "How was your day, honey?" That's just not the case for most kids.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“I could see he didn’t understand that knowing a person is about more than knowing whom they fantasize about. That’s the small stuff, actually. Not the big stuff. The big stuff is lying next to a guy on the floor and locking eyes and having deep conversations about philosophy. The big stuff is letting a friend know your hopes and your fears and not having to make a joke about it. That’s what matters.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Acceptance is an affirmation that you’re good enough.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Selflessness involves giving up your self. You become a martyr. Like the Hindu kamikaze warriors. These Japanese Hindus chose to give up their lives, and they were killed if they didn't. Imagine what their families felt. One day you have a father, and next, you're watching him fly a plane into a ship on Pearl Harbor on television. Those kids didn't do anything wrong. They just lived in an evil country. The axis of evil. That sort of evil is beyond anything you or I will experience in our lifetimes. So be glad. Be glad we live in the US of A. Be glad we get to choose, with our freedoms. Now get out there and fight!”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“We hugged, and my dad cried a little. I don't have a macho-type dad, who hunts and fishes and collects guns. He's sensitive and caring. He drives me crazy most of the time, but I do admire that he's not afraid to show his "feminine side.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“This is where we come," he said.
Albie and I look at each other. “We?”
“Me and, you know.”
Albie’s eyes got wide. “I really don’t think I want to know about this.”
I surprised myself. “I do,” I said. I guess I was tired of having to withhold the truth from Toby. Other than Ben, he and Albie we’re easily my best friends at Natick.
Toby looked a little surprised, like he’d just assumed we wouldn’t want to hear the details.
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
He looked around to make sure we were alone. We definitely were. No one came back here to my knowledge. Also it was cold. Like twenty degrees. Only three idiots would be in the woods in the winter, it seemed to me.
“Robinson” he said.
“Gorilla Butt,” I said, nodding. “I know.”
“You know?”
“Yup.”
Toby crossed his arms an then deflated into a fake pout. “You’re stealing my scene, bitch. Scene stealer.”
“Sorry,” I said. “So you and Gorilla Butt. Wow.”
He flipped me off. “He hates that,” Toby said. “But, yeah. It’s hairy.”
“Oh, look, almost anything else in the universe,” Albie said, heading back to campus and leaving us in the clearing.
“He’s such a prude,” Toby said rolling his eyes.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“Oh, I’m so glad. You love a boy," my mom said. "You’re still our Rafe, underneath this hideous straight disguise….”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

“I knew that she was right, obviously. But part of me didn't want to. I wanted to have someone to call my own so badly that I just couldn't let it go.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from Openly Straight

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Popular quotes

“Contempt is conceived with expectations. Respect is conceived with expressions of gratitude. We can choose which one we will obsess over—expectations, or thanksgivings.”
― Gary L. Thomas, quote from Sacred Marriage: Celebrating Marriage as a Spiritual Discipline

“El poder -dicen- es como un violín. Se toma con la izquierda y se toca con la derecha.”
― Eduardo Galeano, quote from Days and Nights of Love and War

“[There is] a widespread approach to ideas which Objectivism repudiates altogether: agnosticism. I mean this term in a sense which applies to the question of God, but to many other issues also, such as extra-sensory perception or the claim that the stars influence man’s destiny. In regard to all such claims, the agnostic is the type who says, “I can’t prove these claims are true, but you can’t prove they are false, so the only proper conclusion is: I don’t know; no one knows; no one can know one way or the other.”

The agnostic viewpoint poses as fair, impartial, and balanced. See how many fallacies you can find in it. Here are a few obvious ones: First, the agnostic allows the arbitrary into the realm of human cognition. He treats arbitrary claims as ideas proper to consider, discuss, evaluate—and then he regretfully says, “I don’t know,” instead of dismissing the arbitrary out of hand. Second, the onus-of-proof issue: the agnostic demands proof of a negative in a context where there is no evidence for the positive. “It’s up to you,” he says, “to prove that the fourth moon of Jupiter did not cause your sex life and that it was not a result of your previous incarnation as the Pharaoh of Egypt.” Third, the agnostic says, “Maybe these things will one day be proved.” In other words, he asserts possibilities or hypotheses with no jot of evidential basis.

The agnostic miscalculates. He thinks he is avoiding any position that will antagonize anybody. In fact, he is taking a position which is much more irrational than that of a man who takes a definite but mistaken stand on a given issue, because the agnostic treats arbitrary claims as meriting cognitive consideration and epistemological respect. He treats the arbitrary as on a par with the rational and evidentially supported. So he is the ultimate epistemological egalitarian: he equates the groundless and the proved. As such, he is an epistemological destroyer. The agnostic thinks that he is not taking any stand at all and therefore that he is safe, secure, invulnerable to attack. The fact is that his view is one of the falsest—and most cowardly—stands there can be.”
― Leonard Peikoff, quote from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“What were you going to do tonight?"
"I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff."
"Who's that?"
"A dead Russian.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from South of No North

“Man must prepare for the thing he has asked for, when there isn't the slightest sign of it in sight.”
― quote from The Game Of Life How To Play It

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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