17 Quotes by Dale Peck

I have a secret. And everyone knows it but me.

Because freedom, it turned out, wasn't like a new shoe: you didn't need to break it in. It felt comfortable the first time you tried it on. It wasn't the present that pinched, it was the past.

One night I had a dream and woke up and wrote down the dream. That was my first short story. The dream was a kind of fantasy of me getting revenge on my father.

Sometimes when we think we’re protecting ourselves, we’re really hurting ourselves. And sometimes the people around us too.

Losing my virginity was very boring.

Who cares what the state thinks about your relationship? They’re giving you tax breaks and this and that – it’s just nonsense. You want to live with somebody, then live with somebody. All that other stuff is just a way for the state monitoring and codifying certain activities and ostracizing others.

AIDS was one of those diseases that a lot of people tried to claim ownership over, and especially as someone who was, fortunately never HIV positive, I wanted to avoid any appearance of doing that.

Art is only great if it’s uncodifiable. If art isn’t scaring you, if it’s not making you upset, then I don’t think it’s actually doing anything.

It’s nice to have something you think separates you from the mainstream and gives you perspective on that, but it can become very limiting at the same time if it’s something you use to artificially define yourself.