19 Quotes by Darcey Steinke

Say no! I thought. Say you want yourself all for your own self. Say that you have no specific country, say that you are important without any story from above, say that your home is with me and the other girls up in the sky.

You’ll see, there are a million ways to kill off the soft parts of yourself.

When you love a woman, you love yourself, and it’s terrible really, how it seems perfectly possible to swallow the other. With a man you want to join, you want your ribs to connect like handcuffs. But with a woman if you swallow, she becomes you.

I always think to myself, being human, having crushes now, what is it about that person that I really want? What do they represent? More freedom? Someone to care for me more? It’s never really about the person.

The problem with being a modern woman, I thought, as the front door swung wide, is that you have to pretend to be stronger than you are.

I think unknowing is the most important theological idea for me. Unlearning the things you think you know.

As a child I made a pact with my mother. I agreed that we were doomed, that she and I abided together in a cocoon of melancholy.

I knew people want most what they pretend to hate, that it takes courage to say what you really want.

I spent so much time as a child thinking what if I was a robot, what if my mind were somewhere else? As a kid you’re in the middle of all that.