" Why is insensitivity something to strive for? I happen to know that my sensitivity is my strength. I know that. It's my sensitivity that's helped me navigate a very difficult path in life."
"I think part of my problem is comedy has suspended me in a perpetual state of adolescence. They way I've been telling that story is through jokes. And stories...unlike jokes, need three parts. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Jokes...only need two parts. A beginning and a middle...But unfortunately, that joke version was not nearly sophisticated enough to help me undo the damage done to me in reality. Punchlines need trauma because punch lines ...need tension, and tension feeds trauma."
"By the time I identified as being gay, it was too late. I was already homophobic, and you do not get to just flick a switch on that. No, what you do is you internalize that homophobia and you learn to hate yourself. Hate your self to the core. I sat soaking in shame...in the closet, for ten years. Because the closet can only stop you from being seen. It is not shame-proof."
"When you soak a child in shame, they cannot develop the neurological pathways that carry thoughts of self-worth. They can't do that."
"Self-hatred is only ever a seed planted from outside in. But when you do that to a child, it becomes a weed so thick, and it grows so fast, the child doesn't know any different. It becomes... as natural as gravity."
"I need to tell my story properly."
"Nobody is born ahead of their time...Artists don't invent zeitgeists! They respond to it."
"...He couldn't network. This whole idea, this romanticizing of mental illness, is ridiculous. It is not a ticket to genius. It's a ticket to fucking nowhere."
"I understand the world I live in and my place in it. And I don't have one...That's'cause I haven't wasted time looking...for how I fit in. I don't."
"And you know why I didn't? It's because I thought that was all I was worth. And that is what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate...And this tension, it's yours. I am not helping you anymore. You need to learn what this feels like because this...this tension is what not-normals carry inside of them all the time because it is dangerous to be different!"
"I don't hate men, but I wonder how a man would feel if they'd lived my life. Because it was a man who sexually abused me when I was a child. It was a man who beat the shit out of me when I was 17, my prime. It was two men who raped me when I was barely in my twenties. Tell me why is that okay. Why was it okay to pick me off the pack like that and do that to me? It would have been more humane to just take me out to the back paddlock and put a bullet in my head if it is that much of a crime to be different!"
"I don't tell you this...so you think of me as a victim. I am not a victim. I tell you this because my story has value. My story has value. I tell you this'cause I want you to know, I need you to know, what I know."
"To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilence is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have a right to render another human being powerless."
"They are weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength ...I will not allow my story...destroyed. What I would have done to have heard a story like mine. Not for blame. Not for reputation, not for money, not for power. But to feel less alone. To feel connected. I want my story...heard."
"I believe we could paint a better world if we learned how to see it from all perspectives, as many perspectives as we possibly could. Because diversity is strength. Difference is a teacher. Fear difference, you learn nothing. "
"A 17-year-old girl is just never, ever, ever in her prime! Ever! I am in my prime! Would you test the strength out on me? There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself. "
"I've given you an hour, a taste. I have lived a life. The damage done to me is real and debilitating. I will never flourish...But what I don't have a right to do is to spread anger . I don't...Because anger is a tension. It is a toxic, infectious...tension. And it knows no other purpose than to spread blind hatred, and I want no part of it. Because I take my freedom of speech as a responsibility. "
"Laughter is not our medicine. Stories hold our cure. Laughter is just the honey that sweetens the bitter medicine."
"I just needed my story heard, my story felt and understood by individuals with minds of their own. Because, like it or not, your story...is my story. And my story...is your story. I just don 't have the strength to take care of my story anymore... All I can ask is just please help me take care of my story. "
"Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that...is the focus of the story we need. Connection. "
View more about Hannah Gadsby: Nanette reviews
