“Never compare your insides to everyone else's outsides.”

— Anne Lamott

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Anne Lamott146

Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist 1954

P. C. Cast book Betrayed

Source: Betrayed

“This family has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

"And God Smiles," sermon preached at All Saints Church, Pasadena, California (6 November 2005)
Context: This family has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider. When Jesus said, "I, if I am lifted up, will draw..." Did he say, "I will draw some"? "I will draw some, and tough luck for the others"? He said, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all." All! All! All! – Black, white, yellow; rich, poor; clever, not so clever; beautiful, not so beautiful. All! All! It is radical. All! Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Bush – all! All! All are to be held in this incredible embrace. Gay, lesbian, so-called "straight;" all! All! All are to be held in the incredible embrace of the love that won’t let us go.

“The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

“She has often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see.”

Myla Goldberg book Bee Season

Source: Bee Season

“Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

“It is the “battle of the beliefs”: hanging on to your belief that you are who you are despite how others may define you, while also challenging yourself not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides. It’s a constant effort to align yourself externally with how you feel internally.”

Ashlee Marie Preston American media personality, producer, and activist

On the topic of gender dysphoria, as quoted in [Man, Chella, What It’s Like to Be Trans and Live With Gender Dysphoria, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-its-like-to-be-trans-and-live-with-gender-dysphoria, 29 January 2019, Teen Vogue, September 21, 2018]