77 Quotes by Michelle Tea

Maybe if everyone walked around being in touch with each other's hidden pain it could work out and even be beautiful, but it doesn't feel safe to be the only compassionate person on the planet.

The horror of knowing someone and living with them and even thinking you're lucky and then wham and now you know that every person is really two people and how can you ever know what the other half is up to.

I've been dreaming about having a press forever, like the '90s. I've always known so many great writers who aren't as connected to the publishing world as they should be, and I have the energy and the enthusiasm to sort of gather and promote people, so I've always thought someday I might embark on a big project like that.

...people like to say things like 'all work is prostitution'. Most work is exploitation, but most work is not prostitution. Prostitution is prostitution, a very specific sort of exploitation... And while I am doing literal corrections to flippant turns of phrase, the earth doesn't get raped. It gets mined and poisoned and blown up and depleted, it gets ruined, but it doesn't get raped.

There are a lot of queers starved for entertainment from their own community.

I have had the occasion of coming into money and spending some recklessly, like on a purse. At this point, shopping and the spending of money on things like Botox gives me the rush I used to get copping drugs on the street. Or, making other people cop drugs for me on the street. I didn't like to do that. I wanted to protect my reputation.

I drank some coffee and my outlook improved immensely. I was ready to write some poems and, I don’t know, get drunk, run around, take my shirt off and get kicked out of someplace. You know, live a little.

There is a huge difference between writing a book, which is a private activity I engage in with myself, and wanting to engage in overly intimate personal conversations with strangers, which I pretty much never want to do.

If I talk about the bad old days of crystal meth for too long, I start getting like, "Oh...speed...that was delicious..." But in general, I don't so much. Or wait - maybe the recklessness just occurs in a different sphere so it doesn't look like bottoming out. But really - isn't trying to have a baby sort of a reckless thing to do?