Judith Butler Quotes

We are, all of us, incoherent text, and just knowing that - knowing that no matter how much you say, 'I am this' and part of you is not that - means that you can say it.

As I don't know what life would be like without my Chaplin connections, I work with them. I'm just really happy it's a family I can be proud of; it's not as if I'm related to some Z-list celebrity.

The best thing is being really close. The worst thing is being really close.

My dad's gay experiences really had a very positive influence on me and my straight relationships - how to better accept all the weirdness and ambiguity and ups and downs and paradoxes. I knew from the beginning I was writing about love.

Family is more than DNA, more than who we used to be, more than we can imagine we will become.

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?

I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.

I'm of the establishment but anti-establishment.

We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.

We are what we love.

What we share with another ceases to be our own.

I love women, but I've never had a relationship with a woman.

At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. You can love completely without complete understanding.

In our world of rampant 'individualisation', relationships are mixed blessings. They vacillate between a sweet dream and a nightmare, and there is no telling when one turns into the other.

Your connections to all the things around you literally define who you are.

I am an undiplomatic diplomat.

Home, for me, is with the people who I really love - whether that's in England with my family, Ireland with my relatives, or Germany and Canada with my friends.

I'm both an insider and an outsider.

The overall concept of 'Only You' is a reflection on the illusion of love, how we confront, understand and manifest our self identities within relationships.

What are you?" I whispered. He shrugged again. "Something," he said. "Something like you, something like a beast, something like a bird, something like an angel." He laughed. "Something like that.

The ancient human question 'Who am I?' leads inevitably to the equally important question 'Whose am I?' - for there is no self outside of relationship.

Who do you love? It's a question anyone should be able to answer. A question that defines a life, creates a future, guides most minutes of one's days. Simple, elegant encompassing. Who do you love?

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected.