Don't you kids get any ideas about dragging a trailer into the backyard? After you graduate from high school, I don't want to see you again.

— Alison Bechdel

Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice.

— Alison Bechdel

Four years after my father's death, when the subject of parents came up in conversation I would relate the information in a flat, matter-of-fact tone eager to detect in my listener the flinch of grief that eluded me.

— Alison Bechdel

Gatsby's self-willed metamorphosis from farm boy to prince is many ways identical to my father's. Like Gatsby, my father fueled this transformation with the "colossal vitality of his illusion". Unlike Gatsby, he did this on a school teacher's salary.

— Alison Bechdel

Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.

— Alison Bechdel

How Horrid" has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildman. It appears to embrace the actual horror--puberty, public disgrace--then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.

— Alison Bechdel

If it weren't for the unconventionality of my desires, my mind might never have been forced to reckon with my body.

— Alison Bechdel

I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciation effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.

— Alison Bechdel

It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex.

— Alison Bechdel

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!

— Alison Bechdel