Ivan E. Coyote Quotes & Sayings

Thou shalt not let the world make you hard — Ivan E. Coyote

I realize that the English language is sadly devoid of names for people like me. I try to cut the world some slack for this every day. All day. And the day after that, too. But the truth is that every time I am misgendered, a tiny little sliver of me disappears, A tiny little sliver of me is reminded that I do not fit ... I remember that the truth of me is invisible, and a tiny little sliver of me disappears. Just a sliver, razored from the surface of my very thick skin most days, but other times right from my soul, sometimes felt so deep and other days simply shrugged off, but still. All those slivers add up to something much harder to pretend around. — Ivan E. Coyote

She worries because she fears what the world might do to you, and because she doesn't know any successful tattooed butch storytellers with biceps and a brush cut. Yet. — Ivan E. Coyote

I am a rare species, not a stereotype. — Ivan E. Coyote

books: Nancy Drew, Harriet the Spy, Encyclopedia Brown, and later, anything with even a passing mention of sex in it: Judy Blume's Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, and those Clan of the Cave Bear books, the whole Flowers in the Attic series. But mostly we were obsessed with a book called The Chrysalids. We — Ivan E. Coyote

Bullies are almost always outnumbered by the bullied. We just need to organize. — Ivan E. Coyote

Any knowledge of homosexuality I might have had would have gone back to Victorian times. All those novels. You probably skirted under my radar, because you weren't wearing hoop skirts and high button boots. — Ivan E. Coyote

If you do ever decide to go on testosterone, build yourself into a good man. The last thing the world needs is another misogynist prick. — Ivan E. Coyote

I became something I had no name for in solitude and only later discovered the word for what I was and realized there were others like me. — Ivan E. Coyote

We are carrying contraband words with us, memorized, tucked away in tattered journals and stored magically on disks in Anna's left pocket. Canadian words, queer words that we spoke on-stage for money in the land of the brave. With no valid permit, license, visa or contract to do so. Felons, really, all of us, and now we intended to flee the scene without paying income tax on the twelve dollars and fifty American cents we each made. It's just this kind of shameless law-breaking that gives all poets a bad name. — Ivan E. Coyote