Top 50 Bill Konigsberg Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Actually, tolerance and acceptance are different. To tolerate seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn’t it?”

— Bill Konigsberg

2. “I mean, if you accept something, you take it for what it is. Tolerance is different. Less.”

— Bill Konigsberg

3. “There are so many different kinds of relationships out there, sweetie. The thing that makes one okay and another not is whether it comes from a place of love. Nothing that comes from love could ever be wrong.”

— Bill Konigsberg

4. “Everybody wanted something from me, and some days it felt like I was being pulled in thirty different directions, and I wondered how anyone figured out how to be all things to all people without going insane. The.”

— Bill Konigsberg

5. “When trust is violated, it’s like you’re left with an empty piggy bank. Building trust again, she said, is like putting big, fat nickels into the slot. They clank against the bottom, and that sound is jarring. But in order to heal, you have to keep adding those nickels, and soon enough, there will be coins to cushion the nickel’s fall and make the sound not so grating.”

— Bill Konigsberg

6. “And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated.”

— Bill Konigsberg

7. “It’s funny because it’s true, and also it’s the kind of humor that makes you think.”

— Bill Konigsberg

8. “With my white friends, I’m always half Mexican. They never say I’m half Irish. Never say I’m half white. Like I’m tainted halfway from the standard. It’s like when I was a kid and I thought vanilla ice cream meant no flavor, like it was the base of all of the flavors. But vanilla is a bean. Like chocolate is a bean. Like cinnamon is a root. All roots and beans. All flavors. There is no base. No ice cream without a flavor.”

— Bill Konigsberg

9. “I could see the combinations and permutations flutter through their minds. This was Boulder. It could easily be two moms. Two dads. A dad, a mom, and an orangutan. Three Amish hipsters and a transgendered Aboriginal mermaid.”

— Bill Konigsberg

10. “The hole in my heart, I can’t even begin to describe. It’s hard when you open your heart and let someone in and then suddenly they’re not in it anymore. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is; that empty spot stings so bad that you want to find any kind of relief, or wrap yourself up so tight you can’t feel it anymore. I knew it might be there a little while. Or maybe even a long while. For both of us.”

— Bill Konigsberg

11. “Straight people have it so much easier. They don’t understand. They can’t. There’s no such thing as openly straight.”

— Bill Konigsberg

12. “But I do think that when we choose the easy path, where people or society reward us for being what they want us to be, against who we really are, a kind of death occurs. To the soul.”

— Bill Konigsberg

13. “Do you know how you get the urge to clean your room, and it’s no big deal? But when your mom tells you that you have to clean your room, you don’t want to? That’s me, anyway.”

— Bill Konigsberg

14. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a world where no one thought being gay was even something to ride someone about?”

— Bill Konigsberg

15. “More and more these days, I’m realizing that I might be crazy, but I’m loved too. I don’t think I ever really knew that before, but I do now.”

— Bill Konigsberg

16. “The world will make you vulnerable. If you’re acting like you’re not, that’s what you’re doing. Acting.”

— Bill Konigsberg

17. “Having no room of my own to “take care of things” had begun to weigh on me. I wondered if storing up semen would have a health impact on me, positive or negative, like shinier hair or weight gain.”

— Bill Konigsberg

18. “You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn’t feel good.”

— Bill Konigsberg

19. “Guilt is about something you do. Shame is about who you are.”

— Bill Konigsberg

20. “It’s hard to explain,” she says. “I would say that I’m more spiritual than religious at this point.” “What does that even mean?” I stare upward at the gleaming stars. “To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality.”

— Bill Konigsberg

21. “Vulnerability is allowing people to see you exactly as you are, which is really hard, because when you’re vulnerable you can get hurt. Most people armor up with bravado or something, but those people are missing out, because without allowing yourself to be vulnerable, it’s tough to have, like, any emotional experience at all. Letting people in is really vulnerable, and most people – especially introverts – have trouble.”

— Bill Konigsberg

22. “I worry sometimes that our world actually values a lack of intelligence. Like we are considered normal if we spend our time thinking about what one of the Kardashians wears to a party, and we are considered strange if we wonder whether a bee’s parents grieve if said bee dives into the Central Park Reservoir and never makes it back to the hive.”

— Bill Konigsberg

23. “I think it’s okay to just say who you are without it being final or something. I mean, none of us are finished products. We change. We keep changing. We won’t be finished products ’til the day we die.”

— Bill Konigsberg

24. “He’s a good looking guy, no question. All bluster and confidence while I’m whatever the opposite of that is. Apologies and embarrassment. Awkwardness and sorrow. First dead in a zombie apocalypse.”

— Bill Konigsberg

25. “I know about urinal etiquette. For one thing, you don’t say anything beyond “What’s up” to another guy while peeing. It’s common courtesy.”

— Bill Konigsberg

26. “And I think, What’s the opposite of suffocation?”

— Bill Konigsberg

27. “The world needs people who are more comfortable standing still. We keep the earth on it axis when everybody else is bouncing around.”

— Bill Konigsberg

28. “Acceptance is an affirmation that you’re good enough.”

— Bill Konigsberg

29. “He was staring into my eyes, and I felt that shivery thing that happens when you look in someone’s eyes and you get goose bumps because you’re gaining access.”

— Bill Konigsberg

30. “Wow. Did I just write that? I didn’t want who I am to come between us? How could I not have seen that?”

— Bill Konigsberg

31. “Some things you remember, and some you forget. Of the things you remember, you have to wonder what’s real and what’s translated into a memory from a story you heard.”

— Bill Konigsberg

32. “He said he was scared they’d lock him up. That’s his biggest fear.”

— Bill Konigsberg

33. “It’s not, like, denial? In the GSA we joke that bi guys are just gay guys who aren’t ready to admit it yet.” I.”

— Bill Konigsberg

34. “Just smile, Max. The paint cannot be stronger than a smile. But it is.”

— Bill Konigsberg

35. “I think some people are bi, definitely.”

— Bill Konigsberg

36. “As I opened the car door and stepped back into the chilly night, I was thinking that maybe the key to life is to have goldfish memories. So you can’t remember the time a friend hurt you. So you can give second and third and even fourth chances. To yourself too. Because sometimes it takes multiple.”

— Bill Konigsberg

37. “The idea that because things are worse somewhere else, you’re not allowed to have issues in your life. That’s what people who are trying to avoid having normal feelings say.”

— Bill Konigsberg

38. “As soon as I tried to remove the label, a lie formed. In the end, that lie created a barrier way worse than the original one. How crazy is that? Ironic, I mean. I created a barrier getting rid of a barrier. At.”

— Bill Konigsberg

39. “I tried to imagine myself part of a pack of guys who picked up local public school girls on weekends. It was hard to envision, but I was definitely willing to try. Not the pickup part. Just the being in a posse part.”

— Bill Konigsberg

40. “Lean forward, and head on down the mountain.”

— Bill Konigsberg

41. “To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality... I mean it’s prepackaged. Lowest common denominator. People just have to follow the present motions and rituals and rules. The don’t have to think about how the words reconcile with their own hearts. Their own experience.”

— Bill Konigsberg

42. “For dessert, Mom ordered us carob-chip cookies sweetened with fruit juice, which were about as delectable as that sounds. After we finished eating, we made sure to give the waitress all our food and dirty napkins so they could be composted.”

— Bill Konigsberg

43. “He was an amazing guy, really. Totally himself. Totally unapologetic about having all these different sides of his personality that didn’t quite mesh. He didn’t care what people saw, and at that moment, the envy was so powerful, I wanted to punch him in the face.”

— Bill Konigsberg

44. “That never even occurred to me, that he had feelings.”

— Bill Konigsberg

45. “We hugged, and my dad cried a little. I don’t have a macho-type dad, who hunts and fishes and collects guns. He’s sensitive and caring. He drives me crazy most of the time, but I do admire that he’s not afraid to show his “feminine side.”

— Bill Konigsberg

46. “I’m not getting this. How do you take a break from who you are, Shay Shay?”

— Bill Konigsberg

47. “Anyway, my whole thing is, whatever path I’m on, I’m on. I’m not going to avoid it because it’s harder for the world, or even harder for me. I’m like, I gotta be me, you know?”

— Bill Konigsberg

48. “I was thinking about how snakes shed their skin every year, and how awesome it would be if people did that too. In lots of ways, that’s what I was trying to do. As.”

— Bill Konigsberg

49. “And during, I realized that the labels didn’t matter, because when two people feel that sort of pull toward each other, it just works, and the only label that mattered was that I was in love. Totally, fully, ecstatically.”

— Bill Konigsberg

50. “I had the strong sensation that I’d underestimated my parents and their devotion to me. Of course they’d be on my side, whether they understood or not. That was just the kind of parents they were.”

— Bill Konigsberg