Jennifer Finney Boylan Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

The more we feel compelled to keep explaining ourselves, the less like others we become. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

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

I wondered ...if meeting people with creativity and passion when you were at an impressionable enough age actually kind of ruined you for life among normal people.

For a long time, I'd searched the world, thinking I could start up new friendships like the ones I'd had before. But I never met people like that again. I know people will think that's what everyone believes about their college friends, but it's true. Maybe we're like flowers that open up at that brief moment in our lives, and after that, we close up again, one by one. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

Dialectics is the philosophy of opposites."
I thought about this. "How do you make a philosophy out of opposites?"
"Well, you know how people are. They like to see things in black and white? Up or down, male or female?"
She had my attention now. "Uh-huh."
"Well, dialectics says that's all bullshit. That life is not about opposites, but about finding the balance between all these extremes."
I tried to sound less interested than I actually was. "How do you do that?" I said. "Find balance, I mean?"
"By paying attention," she said. "By trying to see how everything also contains its opposite." She took a drag on her cigarette. "Because if you live your life at the extremes, you go nuts. If you want to make any sense out of the world, you have to live in the gray."
"That sounds hard," I said.
"The hell yes it's hard," she said. "People don't like gray. It makes people uncomfortable. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

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

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

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

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

A memoir is meant to be an impression of life, and not a photograph. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

I did love her, though, for a little while anyhow. That was the thing: I still believed, on some fundamental level, that love would cure me. That if only I were loved deeply enough by someone else, I would be content to stay a man. It wouldn't be my authentic life, but it would be all right. It was better, in any case, than coming out as transsexual, taking hormones, and having some gruesome operation and walking around like Herman Munster. An authentic life wasn't very appealing. And so I allowed myself to be lifted off the ground by the levitating properties of romantic love. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

Although my understanding of exactly how much trouble I was in grew more specific over time, as a child I surely understood enough about my condition to know it was something I'd better keep private. By intuition I was certain that the thing I knew to be true was something others would find both impossible and hilarious. My conviction, by the way, had nothing to do with a desire to be feminine, but it had everything to do with being female. Which is an odd believe for a person born male. It certainly had nothing to do with whether I was attracted to girls or boys. This last point was the one that, years later, would most frequently elude people, including the overeducated smarty-pants who constituted much of my inner circle. But being gay or lesbian is about sexual orientation. Being transgedered is about identity. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

Monster a person though monster not human.
Monster like music. Like Beatles! Like Schumann!
World full of stupid. World full of noise.
Monster feel ANGRY. No birthday. No joys.
World full of JUNK monster not comprehend.
What is a childhood? What is a friend?
Monster and human both want the same.
Want conversation. Want love. WANT NO PAIN.
If monster speak heart: monster life only worsen.
Monster not human: BUT MONSTER A PERSON! — Jennifer Finney Boylan

I was sitting on top of a mountain of secrets so high that it was almost impossible to see the earth anymore. For one thing, now that I lived alone, I was living as a woman about half the time. I'd come home and go female and pay the bills and write and watch television, and then I'd go back to boy mode and teach my classes. I didn't venture out into the world much en femme, although I did get out now and then. It was unbelievably frightening. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

How much could the person you love change, and still remain the same person to whom you'd made your promise? We don't expect our lovers to remain the same over the course of a long relationship. In fact, if you're married at sixty-five to the same person you married when you were twenty, your marriage has probably failed. But there are changes, over time, that spell doom for a marriage, although exactly what these are, and to what degree, varies from couple to couple. For some people, vast changes over time make no difference to the fundamental sense of devotion one soul has for another. But for others, relatively small changes can push things to the breaking point: gaining or losing weight, gaining or losing faith, gaining or losing wealth. How does any relationship survive in the end, when change is the only constant? — Jennifer Finney Boylan

It would be my first official reintroduction to the college community since I'd switched from regular to Diet Coke. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

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

The women I knew in those days liked the fact that I had a feminine streak, that I seemed to be sensitive and caring, that I didn't know the names of any NFL teams, that I could make a nice risotto. A lot of straight women love a female sensibility in a man, an enthusiasm that goes right up to, but unfortunately does not quite include, his being an actual woman. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

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

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

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

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

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

At its heart, the quest that trans people are on is to have the same thing that straight - and gay - people have: the ability to wake up in the morning and be ourselves, without permission, without apology. Our lives should not be defined by wigs, or surgery, or which bathroom we use. Our lives should be defined by our identities, and the truth we bear in our hearts. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

I feel like somebody who just got out of prison after 40 years for something she didn't do, like I got pardoned by the governor. When dear friends deal with me with mixed emotions, it is a little like being told, 'Well, Jenny, we're glad you got sprung, really, but quite honestly we did kind of like you better when you were in jail. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

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

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

Maybe we should just love one another, even if we don't completely understand the things that people bear in their dark, strange hearts, even if the stars that other men and women are following seem invisible to us. If we make ourselves open to the humanity of others first, maybe understanding will follow. An incomprehensible theory of the universal isn't necessary if your only ambition is to embrace another soul. What you need, maybe all you need, in fact, is the willingness to love. — Jennifer Finney Boylan