Still Saying It: Five More Voices That Speak the Quiet Truth

After we shared some of the most powerful lines that “say the quiet part out loud,” the response was clear: these words don’t just resonate — they reverberate. Because for queer people, truth-telling isn’t just poetic. It’s survival.

Whether it’s about grief, identity, impermanence, or quiet resilience, these next five quotes continue the thread — written by people who refused to look away, even when it hurt.

6. Maggie Nelson — The Argonauts

“You’re always you, and that doesn’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
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In one sentence, Nelson shatters the binary between stability and change — a tension many queer people live with every day. We’re asked to explain ourselves, to pin down who we are, to pick a label and stick to it. But what if we didn’t have to? What if identity could be both grounded and shifting? This quote offers a soft landing for anyone who’s still evolving. Which is all of us.

7. David Wojnarowicz — Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration

“If I close my eyes and think about it, I can sometimes feel my bones drifting back together.”
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Wojnarowicz was a street artist, activist, and one of the most searing voices during the AIDS crisis. This line hits like a whisper from the edge of survival — a fragile, poetic image of healing that’s not neat, but still happening. For queer people who’ve experienced fragmentation — from rejection, addiction, trauma, or simply the daily weight of being unseen — this is a reminder that healing isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s barely perceptible. And still, it counts.

8. Andrea Gibson — Lord of the Butterflies

“I am not the sad story. I am the wind that blew it away.”
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Gibson’s work is radical softness wrapped in fire. This quote speaks to the way queer people are so often reduced to tragedy — our pain spotlighted while our joy is skipped over. But this line flips the script. It doesn’t deny hardship. It reclaims the narrative. You are not what happened to you. You are what you chose to do next.

9. Derek Jarman — Modern Nature

“I am tired of the world being heavy with the past.”
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There’s exhaustion in this line. A kind of grief-fatigue that queer people — especially those carrying the weight of inherited silence, shame, or survival — may know too well. Jarman’s diaries, written while living with HIV and cultivating a garden in the English countryside, are full of this tension: how to hold beauty and sorrow at once. Sometimes, letting go of the past isn’t forgetfulness — it’s mercy.

10. Jeanette Winterson — Written on the Body

“What you risk reveals what you value.”
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Simple. Sharp. Devastating. Love, authenticity, visibility — these things cost us. Especially when systems aren’t built to protect us. Winterson, who has long explored genderless narrators and queer longing, knows this intimately. For many in our community, living openly is itself a risk. But it’s also a declaration. Of what matters. Of who we are.

Your Turn:
Have words ever reached you like this?
If a lyric, line or poem cracked something open — we’d love to know.
Message us. Tag us. Or just share it with a friend who might need to hear it too.

Because the quiet part? It still needs saying.