“In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want—not only you, your whole family and all people like you.”

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”

“You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then you can add all the genius you like.”

“I know I can't tell you what it's like to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not. It's not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity.”

“I suppose you could pass for a starlet. You do have that femme fatale air about you. Like you crush boys’ dreams in your spare time.”

“When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree by the river of truth, and tell the whole world 'No, You Move.”

“I know there are people in this room who go to school every day and get treated like shit for no reason. Or you go home and you feel like you can’t tell your parents the whole truth about yourself. Beyond putting yourself in one box or another, you worry about the future. About college or work or even your physical safety. Trying to create that mental picture of your life—of what on earth is going to happen to you—can crush you a little bit every day. It is toxic and painful and deeply unfair.”

“Don't let anyone else tell you when your time is up or what's best for you, you make that. And if you live by what other people want you to do with your life, you will be miserable, I can guarantee you that.”

“They tell you, you can get everything you need from pulses and lentils and things like that. Yeah. Everything you need, except company, which is not to be had, because you are dying, bent double in a miasma of your own toxic farts.”

“Hemp and marijuana should be regulated like onions. No difference. If you can grow onion in your backyard, you can grow hemp or weed in your backyard. If you can grow onions in your farm, your family farm, you can grow help or marijuana in your family farm.”