31 Quotes by Christopher Barzak

Real strength isn’t control. It’s knowing when to let go.

I really do feel like I was born to write and tell stories.

Everything about us was entirely normal, really. We were as ordinary as anything we might come across in this world.

Just two people in love.

I yearned for these other worlds where magic empowers people who understood it because I wanted to change my world, my place in it. I wanted to either be more visible, seen for who I am in my entirety and respected for it... or else I wanted to be even more invisible, protected from a world that would attempt to destroy me if others knew I was unlike them. That I was other. That I was queer

You see, that’s what’s so odd, how everyone thinks they’re normal and the truth is no one in the world is normal at all. Isn’t that wonderful?

That’s what love hotels are for.”“I know,” says Ai, “but this man comes alone. He says he comes to this room and thinks about the lovers who have been here before him, imagines himself as one of them, imagines himself having someone to hold. He tells whoever is reading this that he’s grateful for the love we share without knowing.

Transformation is something that obsesses me. What is the soul? Is there a difference between something like a soul and something like a self? Is our identity something we construct, or is it organic and natural? There are all kinds of theories.

We spent the night smiling politely at each other through this glass barrier that felt like it had sprung up right behind my eyes. Like I was trapped inside myself, and the me who danced awkwardly with her on the floor was this stand-in, making dumb jokes while I beat against the glass wall, beat against it with my fists and then my head...