“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.”

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish it’s source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman. ”

“I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live richly and darkly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, god, as a woman i want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling all that I am capable of doing but I am going to be pursued, fucked, and possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.”

I love the last two, but have issue with it at the same time, probably because of its implied heterosexuality, but also because they hinge on womanhood and femaleness. I am trying to find a new quote to use, and none of them quite work, because they’re all about men and women and I want one more ambiguous. I suppose I could change some wording, but… I don’t know. I mean, granted, I’m with a man right now, and I love him very much, but we are also poly and I also love women and need a woman in my life, and I don’t consider it the natural place of women to be submissive to men, so here lies the problem. I will stick to what I had before, but I’m still wanting a new quote, dammit.