Alison Bechdel Quotes

I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.

Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.

In a narcissistic cathexis, you invest more energy into your ideas about another person than in the actual, objective, external person. So the man who falls in love with beauty is quite different from the man who loves a girl and feels she is beautiful and can see what is beautiful about her.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

It was a vicious cycle, though. The more gratification we found in our own geniuses, the more isolated we grew.

My father once nearly came to blows with a female dinner guest about whether a particular patch of embroidery was fuchsia or magenta. But the infinite gradations of color in a fine sunset - from salmon to canary to midnight blue - left him wordless.

If it weren't for the unconventionality of my desires, my mind might never have been forced to reckon with my body.

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!

I don't know, maybe it's because I was raised Catholic. Confession has always held a great appeal for me.

For some reason writing and drawing are very separate processes for me.