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.

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.

There are times when I think it’s impossible to know another soul. I don’t know, maybe we’re lucky that way. If we knew what really went on inside other people’s private hearts it would make our eyeballs bleed.

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

Most of the time I just have to resign myself to the fact that this whole business is beyond comprehension for most straight people. If you’re not trans, you’re free from thinking about what gender you are in the same way that white people in America are generally free from having to think about what race they are.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.