#1 book. Believe.

"In this book I'm going to show you that I am just like everybody else. I hope when you are done reading this book, you'll put it down and say 'Oh my god! I've just read my own life story.' That's what I mean by letting it all hang out."

"One of the questions I am so often asked is, 'What do I call you? He or she?' And I say 'You can call me he, you can call me she, you can call me Regis and Kathie Lee, just so long as you call me.'"

"My immediate family, who were my role models and heroes, were all feminine. They were showing their emotions and wearing them in the same way they wore their clothes; when they were sad they cried, when something was funny they laughed out loud, and when something confused them they asked questions. I've always found strength in that, and comfort in my own femininity. I've always loved it, expressed it, lived it."

"I just couldn't shake the sensation that I didn't belong, and that this was not my real home. You know what? It isn't. Planet Earth is a high school from hell, and we are all just students here. When I realized that, I screamed out loud. I've always felt like a foreign exchange student, a resident alien. You come here for one thing only, and that is to learn. I used to spend a lot of my life waiting for the day I could quit school, but then I came to realize that so long as we are alive we never leave school. Life is a series of high schools, one after the other. And if you don't study, do your homework, and learn enough in one lifetime you just get sent back and have to do it all over again."

"Then when I was four I saw Diana Ross and the Supremes singing 'Baby Love' on the Ed Sullivan show. It wasn't their first time on, but my first time seeing them. It was love at first sight. I remember saying to myself, 'There, that one there, the one in the middle, that's me!' I recognized her energy as my energy. She looked so happy, so radiantly happy to be there, and it just blew me away... I've heard tell that when Oprah saw her she said, 'Colored girl on television! Colored girl on television!'"

"He said, 'Don't take life so seriously.'.. It took me a few years, but now I totally know what he means, and it's probably the most important thing anyone's ever told me. The point is that life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death. To put your problems into proper perspective, you need to realize that as serious as they may seem to you, compared to the plight of the rest of the world, they're not half bad. Andy Warhol's tip when you get upset and freaked out about something is to sit back and say, "So what?' So what? because believe me, the rest of the Universe does not give a shit about your problems. So what? because in reality your problem is probably no big deal. And finally, So what? because there may not be anything that you can do about it- these things often have to unravel themselves, and there is nothing you can do other than have the grace and patience to sit them out."

"I've never been good with cliques. Cliques are all about people trying to find security in groups... People aren't really together in cliques, and the sense of security that they feel is just an illusion. Eventually, all cliques disintegrate. That's why I've always felt secure in my insecurity."

".. while marching up the street, I looked over the shoulder of the National Guardsmen and into the eyes of one of the Klansmen. And our eyes locked. I realized then that many of them probably liked Michael Jackson's Thriller album, Haagen-Dazs ice cream, and springtime in Georgia. What's the brouhaha? ... When I looked that person in the eyes I realized that I was looking at myself. He had found a way to bring attention to himself and validate himself. And so had I. No matter what uniform we may be waring, underneath it all we are all the same-- unique individuals, alone, aching to belong."

"During the taping of the 'Geraldo' show, I said there was more to clubbing than just kids dressing up. It was a sign of people being free spirits. I said, 'These bodies, this flesh and blood, they too are drag, because they are just temporary outfits for our eternal souls, Amen.'"

"There are so many rules imposed on us about what we should do, what we should say. Boys should be boys, and girls should be girls. But says who? Little boys should wear blue and little girls pink, you should not wear white shoes after Labor Day, you should not pick your nose. Tell me who says that? Where do these rules come from in the first place? Who says you can't bend over backward and eat bugs if you want to?"

A new hero for Jupiter in Cancer! Haha.
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Written about 25 years ago from present day. This is RuPaul just as she was making a name for herself. Long before RuPaul's drag race or any of the other things that she's done since the millennium. Shortly after the club kid craze and her launching herself on the world as Supermodel of the World. She does have a positive joyful attitude throughout the book and starts off with her childhood and goes forward. Several photos where you wonder what she was thinking at the time lol. ( )

See full review here: http://thesteadfastreader.blogspot.com/2014/01/shantay-you-stay-saturday-lettin-...

Fabulous. Conveys a positive image while looking into the life of a Superstar. Bravo, RuPaul. ( )