Jennifer Finney Boylan Quotes

#1. I really did "choose" to be Jim every single day, but that once I put my sword down I haven't chosen Jenny at all; I simply wake up and here I am.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#2. that Victoria's wife has said that she will phone the police if Victoria ever so much as even mentions this topic again.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#3. It would be my first official reintroduction to the college community since I'd switched from regular to Diet Coke.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#4. The more we feel compelled to keep explaining ourselves, the less like others we become.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#5. Maybe ... it's easier to have enemies than not to have them ... If you don't hate people, you have to learn to like them ... And liking people? That's not easy.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#6. You carry the past with you. Even if there's a before, and an after, in your life. It's still the same life. The trick is to build a bridge between that and what comes later.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#7. As it turns out, we're all still learning to be men, or women, all still learning to be ourselves. pg 197

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#8. And at every moment as I lived my life, I countered this awareness with an exasperated companion thought, namely, Don't be an idiot. You're not a girl. Get over it. But I never got over it.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#9. What transsexuality emphatically is not is a 'lifestyle,' any more than being male or female is a lifestyle. Gender is many things, but one thing it is surely not is a hobby. What it is, more than anything else, is a fact.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#10. Gay and lesbian people don't necessarily have that much in common with transsexuals." "Yeah," I said. "Except for the fact that we get beaten up by the same people.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#11. Briefly, I was a journalist in my twenties, although not a very good one. I didn't quite grasp the whole concept of accuracy.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#12. When the fire of your soul ignites the passion within your heart, don't view it as an opportunity for success or failure, view it as an open door for miracles.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#13. I think it's very human, the hope that an all-encompassing love will change us into someone else, someone better. That this hope usually turns out to be false makes it no less human; the world is full of hopes far more unlikely than being transformed by love.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#14. It's funny how you can know a person, think of him as your closest friend, and still never gain access to the secret chambers in his heart.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#15. I used to stand at the lectern in my coat and tie, waving my glasses around, urging students to find the courage to become themselves. Then I'd go back to the office and lock the door and put my head down on the desk.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#16. Straight women love a feminine sensibility in a man, but that love only goes up to, and unfortunately does not quite pass, the fact of his being an actual woman.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#17. But surely the idea that one might slip away unseen and take up another life is nearly universal. Is there anything more fundamentally human than the desire to live in another world, as someone other than our own earthbound selves?

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#18. Which is to say that we all have dragons to slay in life. This one is mine. I hope that doing so will provide a model to others on how to find the bravery to be true to oneself, even if it means doing something that seems impossible.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#19. That was the last time I saw Carol. I didn't want to be told I had to be a woman. What I wanted from her was the mystery to a solution.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#20. A memoir is meant to be an impression of life, and not a photograph.

Jennifer Finney Boylan

#21. No one leaped to his feet to rescue her. I think we all knew Grace well enough to understand that she would prefer to rescue herself from this predicament, and we were right.

Jennifer Finney Boylan