Joan Nestle

“History is not a dead thing or a sure thing. It lived with our choices and our dreams. It is the story…

— Joan Nestle

“One of the lessons I have learned in trying to live with history is that for every repression, we have found a…

— Joan Nestle

“After a year and a half my therapist retired, so I was bounced to someone else-a woman. Shazam! I suddenly felt I…

— Joan Nestle

I cannot understand a society that is more afraid of a man in a dress than a man in a soldier’s uniform.

— Joan Nestle

To live without history is to live like an infant, constantly amazed and challenged by a strange and unnamed world.

— Joan Nestle

Flamboyance and fortitude, femme and butch-not poses, not stereotypes, but a dance between two different kinds of women, one beckoning the other…

— Joan Nestle

“We must stand together, realizing the complexity of our histories, both personal and social, choosing when we can tolerate each other’s company…

— Joan Nestle

As a woman, as a lesbian, as a Jew, much of what I call history, others will not. But answering that challenge…

— Joan Nestle

“My Lesbian history tells me that the vice squad is never our friend even when it is called in by women; that…

— Joan Nestle