Laura Jane Grace Quotes

You can be a man who loves a woman but love someone the way a gay man loves another man or a woman loves a woman.

Three trans women came up to me separately to tell me they had felt such a connection with Ava in 'Ex Machina' and her dream of finally coming to full female fruition. They had all cried; one said she was very emotional during the scene where Ava finally puts her skin on for the first time.

Growing up, I never saw images of trans people succeeding.

I've always been drawn to love stories. Growing up, I would devour films like 'Moonstruck,' 'Ghost,' 'Love and Basketball,' and 'Love, Jones,' replacing the lovers in my imagination with two men.

I don't want the same trans story to be told over and over again. I don't want people to get stuck on this very western idea of what it means to be transgender.

Trans voices are really underrepresented, and trans stories are really underrepresented, and when they are presented, they're often reductive. I was interested in putting a trans person and a trans narrative on stage that didn't fall into cliché, that thought a bit more deeply about the experience of being trans, and how those issues tie into things that we all experience. How we tell the story of our lives, versus what might have actually happened, and how we communicate to our former selves. All of those questions were really interesting to me.

Trans people should be able to fall in love and sing love songs too, and have that be just as valid. You turn on the radio and every other song is some guy singing about some girl who broke his heart, or vice versa. And there's not a lot of trans representation with that.

I think love songs are universal. It doesn't mean a particular kind of music. It can be happy, sad or even celebratory. Having a radio station dedicated to love songs make sense.

What's hurtful is when you have portrayals like, you know, when you have someone like Jared Leto who accepts an award for 'Dallas Buyers Club,' after playing a trans woman, standing in a full beard and looking fully cis male: it is communicating to our audiences that underneath all of that, it's still a man under that.

Having trans people play trans roles show that we are valid in our identities, and we exist.

Now that I'm out there and it's known that I'm trans, I think that sometimes might hinder my opportunity in snagging a big cis role.

I think, for all trans people, it's not our only defining feature, but it is a defining feature.

I've written songs about love or about a relationship, but never just, 'I love you.'

My life isn't really that different from a biological female.

I was never going to become a beautiful, passable woman, and I was never going to be a man. It's a quandary. But the trans condition is a beautiful mystery; it's one of nature's best ideas.

When I was growing up, I didn't know of anybody who was trans. There was always, like, this shame, anxiety thing around all of that, even if I wasn't actively expressing it.

Trans women, trans men, AFAB - which is assigned female at birth - and non-binary performers, but especially trans women of color, have been doing drag for literal centuries and deserve to be equally represented and celebrated alongside cis men.

I'm loving the fact that Hollywood is telling trans stories.

When we say 'trans is beautiful' or 'being trans is the best,' that is a truth we created for ourselves that's clearly not true in every signal we get from the world around us.

When we have a trans woman playing a trans woman, then you see, 'Oh wait, this is what trans really is. This is what it looks like: a person.' That sends a message to trans kids that they are valid in their identities that they are allowed to exist.

As a visible and outspoken trans woman myself, I know that it's rare not to have your trans-ness lead the way for you in public spaces.

The problem with the spectrum that is trans-ness and where people like Caitlyn Jenner lie, transitioning and being trans is more than a physical thing. Transition is a process.

Being trans, I've grown up with the understanding that most women are born girls, yet some are born boys. And most men are born boys, yet some are born girls. And if you're ready for this, some people are born girls or boys and choose to identify outside our society's binary system, making them genderqueer.

Historically, we have seen cis men play trans women and vice versa. That casting breaks through the fourth wall, and it gives people the message that trans people are being played by cis men in real life, which is where we get this idea of men in dresses.

As a person who doesn't identify as straight, any love song I write is contextualized by a queer identity.