Top 38 Bill Konigsberg Quotes
#1. Oh, I'm so glad. You love a boy," my mom said. "You're still our Rafe, underneath this hideous straight disguise ... .
Bill Konigsberg
#2. Some things you remember, and some you forget. Of the things you remember, you have to wonder what's real and what's translated into a memory from a story you heard.
Bill Konigsberg
#3. Do you know how you get the urge to clean your room, and it's no big deal? But when your mom tells you that you have to clean your room, you don't want to? That's me, anyway.
Bill Konigsberg
#4. I could see the combinations and permutations flutter through their minds. This was Boulder. It could easily be two moms. Two dads. A dad, a mom, and an orangutan. Three Amish hipsters and a transgendered Aboriginal mermaid.
Bill Konigsberg
#5. I tried to imagine myself part of a pack of guys who picked up local public school girls on weekends. It was hard to envision, but I was definitely willing to try. Not the pickup part. Just the being in a posse part.
Bill Konigsberg
#6. Is this your boyfriend?" the first nun asked.
Clair Olivia looked me up and down. "No. This is my gay friend who decided he was straight and single-handedly wrecked havoc at an all-boys school in Massachusetts this fall. He's gay again and home for Christmas, so yay!
Bill Konigsberg
#7. It needs to be said that sometimes my mom forgets important details when she talks. Like the time she told us she was considering leather (couches, it turns out), or when I was little and she said, "Here's a napkin to put your balls in" (the Atomic Fireballs that I was eating, she meant).
Bill Konigsberg
#8. Men in India hold hands walking down the street," Ben said, his voice right up against my ear.
"Really?"
"Yeah. It's just part of their culture. They don't, you know, do things sexually. They just hold hands. Here, that would be, like, weird."
"Yeah. We Americans are so uptight," I said.
Bill Konigsberg
#10. We hugged, and my dad cried a little. I don't have a macho-type dad, who hunts and fishes and collects guns. He's sensitive and caring. He drives me crazy most of the time, but I do admire that he's not afraid to show his "feminine side.
Bill Konigsberg
#11. Wow. Did I just write that? I didn't want who I am to come between us? How could I not have seen that?
Bill Konigsberg
#12. I had the strong sensation that I'd underestimated my parents and their devotion to me. Of course they'd be on my side, whether they understood or not. That was just the kind of parents they were.
Bill Konigsberg
#13. You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn't feel good.
Bill Konigsberg
#14. What do you call it when a straight person comes out? ... A conversation
Bill Konigsberg
#15. As I said, it wasn't even a gay thing. But it made me think how hard some kids have it with their families. Me, I could show up as Lady GaGa dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, and Mom would be like, "How was your day, honey?" That's just not the case for most kids.
Bill Konigsberg
#16. I'd never been part of a group like that, so it was interesting, like a National Geographic special on wolves that I might watch with my dad.
And I was part of the pack.
Bill Konigsberg
#17. Having no room of my own to "take care of things" had begun to weigh on me. I wondered if storing up semen would have a health impact on me, positive or negative, like shinier hair or weight gain.
Bill Konigsberg
#18. To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality ... I mean it's prepackaged. Lowest common denominator. People just have to follow the present motions and rituals and rules. The don't have to think about how the words reconcile with their own hearts. Their own experience.
Bill Konigsberg
#19. I really don't worry about that anymore. When you're dying, you don't have time for that junk. The shit people did to you? It's over.
Bill Konigsberg
#20. I was thinking about how snakes shed their skin every year, and how awesome it would be if people did that too. In lots of ways, that's what I was trying to do. As
Bill Konigsberg
#22. Guilt is about something you do. Shame is about who you are.
Bill Konigsberg
#23. Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where no one thought being gay was even something to ride someone about?
Bill Konigsberg
#24. More and more these days, I'm realizing that I might be crazy, but I'm loved too. I don't think I ever really knew that before, but I do now.
Bill Konigsberg
#25. Maybe in life, most of us feel inferior because we compare our dress rehearsals to [Janelle Monae's] final performance.
page 113
Bill Konigsberg
#26. I don't think about relatability (when writing), I think about the heart of the character.
Bill Konigsberg
#27. Actually, tolerance and acceptance are different. To tolerate seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn't it?
Bill Konigsberg
#29. Yes, my name is Seamus - pronounced SHAY-mus - Rafael Goldberg. Try being five with that name.
Bill Konigsberg
#30. We were dancers and drummers and standers and jugglers, and there was nothing anyone needed to accept or tolerate. We celebrated.
Bill Konigsberg
#31. I knew that she was right, obviously. But part of me didn't want to. I wanted to have someone to call my own so badly that I just couldn't let it go.
Bill Konigsberg
#32. That was the thing about Ben. He could get away with saying shit like that. I totally couldn't. I wasn't big or masculine enough. In my mind, anyway. But Ben could get all agape on your ass, and you'd just sit there like, huh. Agape. Interesting.
Bill Konigsberg
#33. I'm not getting this. How do you take a break from who you are, Shay Shay?
Bill Konigsberg
#34. Straight people have it so much easier. They don't understand. They can't. There's no such thing as openly straight.
Bill Konigsberg
#35. It's hard to be different," Scarborough said. "And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated.
Bill Konigsberg
#36. The world needs people who are more comfortable standing still. We keep the earth on it axis when everybody else is bouncing around.
Bill Konigsberg
#37. It's hard to explain," she says. "I would say that I'm more spiritual than religious at this point." "What does that even mean?" I stare upward at the gleaming stars. "To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality.
Bill Konigsberg
#38. He was staring into my eyes, and I felt that shivery thing that happens when you look in someone's eyes and you get goose bumps because you're gaining access.
Bill Konigsberg
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