Above is a photo showcasing my collection of LGBT authors, from Elizabeth Bowen to Thornton Wilder. Certainly not an exhaustive list.
June is Pride Month. In light of Orlando, I believe it is even more important this year to stand as ONE solid community. No more prejudice. No more hatred. No more injustice. Equality for all. No matter your views (political, spiritual, etc.), surely we can all agree to kindness and love.
Okay, I am off my soapbox now...now back to the books shall we?
For something a little different let's look at what these authors have to say...a quip, a quote, a saying...either from one of their books or characters, or from them personally.
June is Pride Month. In light of Orlando, I believe it is even more important this year to stand as ONE solid community. No more prejudice. No more hatred. No more injustice. Equality for all. No matter your views (political, spiritual, etc.), surely we can all agree to kindness and love.
Okay, I am off my soapbox now...now back to the books shall we?
For something a little different let's look at what these authors have to say...a quip, a quote, a saying...either from one of their books or characters, or from them personally.
| Elizabeth Bowen "Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting." | Truman Capote "Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act." |
 | William S. Burroughs (First Printing, part of The Nova Trilogy) Burroughs was a prolific and dynamic mover and shaker during the Beat Generation. One of the major postmodernist authors during this time. "After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager'." - oh so true! |
 | John Cheever (First Printing, National Book Award) Cheever mostly wrote about the suburbs of New York and the villages of New England, giving him the titles: "The Chekhov of the suburbs" and "The Ovid of Ossining". "Art is the triumph over chaos." "I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do it alone." |
 | Michael Cunningham (Signed First Printing, Pulitzer) Cunningham is a superb novelist, and one in which I collect all of his work. "There is beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be." |
| Willa Cather "There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." | T.S. Eliot "If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?" |
 | E. M. Forster (First Printing) You may know Forster's popular novels, such as: Howards End and A Room With A View. Maurice is a lesser known novel, yet a ground-breaking one. First written in 1913 and not published until 1971, it deals with the taboo (especially then) subject of homosexuality. Beautifully written. "So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism." - perhaps lost in today's America |
 | Andre Gide (First American Edition, Nobel Prize) Talk about ground-breaking. Gide first published these dialogues in 1911 with the title C.R.D.N. and without an author's name. Reason being? Perhaps because of the theme: Sexual Differentiations. "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." "Be faithful to that which exists within yourself." |
| Allan Hollinghurst "The great wisdom for writers, perhaps for everybody, is to come to understand to be at one with their own tempo." | Selma Lagerlof "The ways of Providence cannot be reasoned out by the finite mind...I cannot fathom them, yet seeking to know them is the most satisfying thing in all the world." |
 | Chuck Palahniuk (First Printing) Sure, you've seen the movie. But have you read the book? Last year Palahniuk released Fight Club 2 in the form of 10 comic books. Quirky idea and spot on! "We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will." "Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known." |
 | Benjamin Alire Saenz (Signed Frist Edition, PEN / Faulkner) Saenz is a fellow Texan, and the chair of the Creative Writing department at the University of Texas El Paso. "I didn't think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be." |
 | Susan Sontag (Signed First Printing, National Book Award) Sontag was not only a writer. She was also an activist who traveled the world writing and speaking about photography, culture, media, AIDS, and human rights. "Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art." |
| Thomas Mann "A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries." | W. Somerset Maugham "My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror." |
 | Gore Vidal (Signed First Printing, part of the Narratives of Empire series) Vidal was a prolific writer of fiction, as well as a political commentator and essayist. His principle subject was the United States and it's society, as evidenced by the Narratives of Empire series. "Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television." - perhaps the best quote here |
 | Alice Walker (Signed First Printing) Walker is best known for The Color Purple. She is the first African-American woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A gifted writer of novels, stories, essays, and poetry. "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." |
| Walt Whitman "Re-examine all that you have been told...dismiss that which insults your soul." | Thornton Wilder "I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts." |
 | Sarah Waters (Signed First Printing) Waters is a writer I have recently discovered and am glad I have done so. The Paying Guests takes place in 1922 and involves the taboo subject of homosexuality...very taboo in the 20's. "I barely knew I had skin before I met you." |
 | Patrick White (First U.K. Edition, Nobel Prize) Definitely the coolest cover of all of these books. The Australian born White won the Nobel Prize for Fiction in 1977. The Vivisector (1970) is the novel that put him on the literary map. "Life is full of alternatives but no choice." "If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others." |
Hope you enjoyed this post. Once again, Thank you!
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