Patrick Califia quotes:

If your relationship with someone is based on your desire for them to change into something radically different, there's no real closeness there, no real communication.

When it comes to your inner critic, my advice is to not take advice from someone who doesn't like you. That's like returning to the perpetrator for healing after you've been abused.

SM is an art. Doing it well requires more than a bag full of expensive whips and exotic electrical toys, a closet full of fetish clothes, or a basement filled with bondage furniture.

As an activist, you gotta pick something that's particularly interesting to you and go for it - because there's no shortage of things to do. And it's sort of a long-term commitment. Activism is for life.

Boy lovers and the lesbians who have young lovers... are not child molesters. The child abusers are priests, teachers, therapists, cops and parents who force their staid morality onto the young people in their custody.

Prejudice usually can't survive close contact with the people who are supposed to be so despicable, which is why the propagandists for hate always preach separation.

Responsibility without power is a really bad deal.

If you live in a society that wishes you didn't exist, anything you do to make yourself happy disrupts its attempts to wipe you out, or at the very least, make you invisible.

A lot of people who are depressed, I think, are suffering from blocked creativity.

The scars are a way of reminding me that the past is real. They are honorable.

This is one of the reasons we need to transition: people can't validate an identity they can't see.

When you're hurting another person, past a certain point you're cracking them open and whatever's inside them gets all over you. So you should kinda check out whether you want that to happen.

Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.

By coming out to ourselves, we free up the energy we spent keeping a part of ourselves hidden.