Golden Boy Quotes

“It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear; one publicly known to have been troubled but be on the mend, the other who has privately lost something to do with innocence and gained something to do with knowledge and adulthood that can never be undone. I feel sometimes there are things that tear me in two directions, that there are two sets of thoughts that grow side by side. But then I realize that I am whole, whatever that means and does not mean; I am complete without the need for additions or alteration.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“In the end, how [is] anyone any different from a 'normal' person? If you love someone, you love them. It doesn't matter where they came from or if they're a boy or a girl, or if you fight, or if they're weird, or if they find it difficult to communicate with you; you just fucking love them.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“I'm starting to understand that attempting to be perfect has been the goal of my life. Our lives. Attempting to be this fault-free, smiling person in this loving, happy family that fits so perfectly in this pretty, inoffensive little town. What was so bad about that goal after all? Only that I couldn't do it. That I let everybody down. I've been so down about it, so depressed thinking about all the balls I was trying to juggle that I've dropped, and now the cogs are turning toward total apathy toward it all, everything and all I can think about is that I am a shell of a human being. I'm a pushover. I'm to blame.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Doctors know nothing. Well. That's kind of unfair. Let's just say the world is unpredictable. Science is unreliable. It can't tell you who you are or what you'll want or how you'll feel. All these researchers are going crazy in their labs, trying to fit us into these little boxes so they can justify their jobs, or their government funding, or their life's work. They can theorize and they can give you a mean, median and mode but it's all standardized guesswork, made official by arrogance. You have to be pretty into yourself to think you can play a part in defining the identity of a bunch of people you don't know, of human beings with complicated shit going on in their bodies. They still don't know what certain parts of our brains do, they still don't know how to cure a common cold, and they say they know about sexuality, about gender. Well, you're not a man because you like football and you're not a woman because you're attracted to men and you're not a chick because you like to be the one who gives and you're not a dude because you like to receive or because sometimes you cry at dumb movies.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Someone dehumanises you by violating your child and every human thought you had for them is broken, undermined, then gone.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“It doesn't matter if I think like a boy or a girl. It doesn't matter anymore if I'm either or both or neither. All that shit seems so petty and immaterial now. There's so little difference between one human being and the next, it's just hypotheses, human ideas about life and the world and words that mean nothing, about definitions that mean nothing to Earth, to nature, to the universe. Boys and girls and intersex people and me--we're just ideas, and when we're dead, the ideas will go with us. It all means nothing.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Well, you're not a man because you like football and you're not a woman because you're attracted to men and you're not a chick because you like to be the one who gives and you're not a dude because you like to receive or because sometimes you cry at dumb movies.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“So I got dressed up kind of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo-y goth. As I head out, I say bye to Mum and Dad, and Mum says, ‘You look cool’, just as Dad says, ‘You look terrifying.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Antes pensaba que quería ser alguien especial. Ahora me gustaría
volver atrás y disponerme a ser alguien aburrido, sin interés, normal.
Hace falta mucha fortaleza para estar orgulloso de ti mismo y
aceptarte cuando sabes que en ti hay algo fuera de lo corriente. Yo tuve
esta fortaleza.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Settling for not-so-bad sounds okay. But, you know, it's hard when you tried so much to make life really good.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“I have heard it said that children are getting older. I think adults are getting younger.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Tonight, there’s no one here to force myself to feel okay for, to smile or hold it together for, and I feel pretty bad.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Maybe golden people tarnish fast.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Ya no puedo mirarme al espejo, ni a ningún reflejo mío en el cristal. Y no sé por qué.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“The boy I love is a broken idea.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“It is obvious, by the sounds of the dizzy, hysterical laughter that you start to exhale when you’re an adult and you have very few friends and only rarely have fun, that they are caught in a bubble of their own awesomeness and won’t be leaving the living room any time soon.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Has de ser muy petulante para creer que puedes definir la identidad de un grupo de personas que no conoces, de seres humanos que tienen en el cuerpo una mierda complicada. Aún no saben cómo funcionan ciertas partes de nuestro cerebro ni saben curar siquiera el resfriado común, y van y pretenden saber sobre sexualidad y género.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“I never thought before how life is so accidental, how it can so easily and quickly be made, and then gone again, in the space of minutes. It makes me appreciate everything more, but it also makes me think about how much of our fate are set by chance, and how many little accidents had to happen to make me what and who I am.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“—Ven a ver cómo es el amor, chiflada —me dice la voz de Max al oído.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“Sometimes things aren't what you think they are, and even when things seem really bad, it can work out.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“The thing is, sometimes you have to be brave and say who you are and how you feel. Even if you don’t know how you’re going to do it. You just have to take a deep breath, and decide to start.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“I never thought before how life is so accidental, how it can so easily and quickly be made, and then gone again, in the space of minutes. It makes me appreciate everything more, but it also makes me think about how much of our fates are set by chance, and how many little accidents had to happen to make me what and who I am.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“It doesn’t matter where they came from or if they’re a boy or a girl, or if you fight, or if they’re weird, or if they find it difficult to communicate with you; you just fucking love them.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“It always seems strange to me how little people notice about each other’s lives.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“I wonder if he was scared. Not scared to die, but scared to live. I wonder if he thought no one would ever love him. He thought the idea of him being intersex put me off. I tried to tell him I couldn’t care less, but I guess I didn’t try hard enough. I wonder if he was scared of it getting out, of people knowing.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“I look down at my Converse. My feet are too small. My hands are too small. Soon everything will be too small, and too delicate, and maybe I won’t make the football squad when I go to sixth form college, and then university. Maybe I won’t be the Max that rules the school. Maybe I’ll just be a loner, a too-androgynous, too weak to play football, too frigid to kiss loner. Then one day I’ll be nothing of my own. I’ll be an uncle to Daniel’s kids. I’ll be a provider for Mum and Dad in their old age because I’ll never have a family of my own. I’ll be the person who always has time to be there for other people. That doesn’t sound so bad. Settling for not so bad sounds OK. But, you know, it’s hard when you tried so much to make life really good..”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“As I realise that I am going to be intersex my whole life. Years and years and decades, maybe for seventy years, I’ll be like this. And, unless I find someone who doesn’t mind having sex with me, I’m going to be alone all that time. I’ll probably be alone all that time. Think. How difficult it is for people to find someone they love, who likes the same things as them, who has the same values, who wants the same things out of life, and then imagine adding to that the fact that they not only have to be OK with having sex with a hermaphrodite, they have to like it.
Without being a totally weird pervert, I add to myself.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“What am I going to do when I get older? Will this emptiness just grow and grow? Will I never be able to have sex with people because they’ll all be grossed out at the way I look, and then will I go to prostitutes, just once, at first, because I just want to do it once, to know what it feels like to be inside someone, to be cuddled up to someone, and then what if I go more and more, because I feel so empty without that feeling, now I know how it feels?”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“I sat down against the wall next to the door and scratched my head back and forth until it hurt. Then I bit my knuckles until they hurt. You don’t know why you’re doing these things when you’re doing them. It just feels like you’re going crazy, that you have no control over what happens in your life or how you feel, and you have to do something to get the energy out, to get back in control..”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy