150+ Romantic, Funny & Moving Lesbian Quotes & Sayings

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Iconic and empowering queer quotes to inspire you

Co-authored by Dev Murphy, MA

Last Updated: December 11, 2025

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• Inspiring
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• Coming-Out
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• Funny
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• Romantic
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• About Relationships
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• Song Lyrics
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• Movie Quotes
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• Short Quotes for Bios

|Show more |Show less

Whether you're proudly out, waiting for the right time, or still not even totally sure how you identify, reading the inspiring words of famous lesbians is a great way to feel more empowered and comfortable being your authentic self. That's why we've compiled a list of our favorite romantic, moving, resilient, and funny queer quotes and sayings, including the words of classic lesbian icons, from Sappho to Audre Lorde to Chappell Roan.

Lesbian Pride Quotes

• You don’t fall in love with the gender. You fall in love with the person.
• "Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me." –Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues
• "The only queer people are those who don't love anybody." –Rita Mae Brown
• "Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me— / sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in." –Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
• Life is too short to ignore love.

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Section 1 of 8:

Inspiring Lesbian Quotes & Sayings

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1. 
   Be moved by these empowering quotes about what it is to be a gay woman. "Women are beautiful, strong, and compassionate," as Rita Mae Brown said. Showcase your WLW pride with these inspiring quotes:

   • "Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me." –Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues
   • "I am trying to become the strongest person I can become to live the life I have been given and to help effect change toward a liveable future for this earth and for my children." –Audre Lorde
   • "I am standing here as a Black lesbian poet, and the meaning of all that waits upon the fact that I am still alive, and might not have been." –Audre Lorde
   • "The failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness." –Adrienne Rich
   • "I became a lesbian because women are beautiful, strong, and compassionate." –Rita Mae Brown
   • "Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat." –Audre Lorde
   • "Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul." –Audre Lorde
   • "Even before I wholly knew I was a lesbian, it was the lesbian in me who pursued that elusive configuration. And I believe it is the lesbian in every woman who is compelled by female energy, who gravitates toward strong women, who seeks literature that will express that energy and strength. It is the lesbian in us who drives us to feel imaginatively, render in language, grasp, the full connection between woman and woman." –Adrienne Rich
   • "And she did not have to ask if this was right, no one had to tell her, because this could not have been more right or perfect." –Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
   • "The beauty of standing up for your rights is others see you standing and stand up as well." –Cassandra Duffy
   • "For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support." –Audre Lorde
   • "Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does." –Audre Lorde
   • Life is too short to ignore love.
   • "I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you." –Audre Lorde
   • "But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.” –Audre Lorde
   • "The only queer people are those who don't love anybody." –Rita Mae Brown
   • "Everyone is their own kind of lesbian. To think there’s a certain way to dress or present yourself in the world is just one more stereotype we have to fit into." –Portia De Rossi
   • "Beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It’s about knowing and accepting who you are." –Ellen DeGeneres
   • You don’t fall in love with the gender. You fall in love with the person.
   • "Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl." –Julie Anne Peters, Keeping You a Secret
   • Love wins.
   • "Being a lesbian means I have the opportunity to love what is uncommon and I’m okay with that. I don’t cry myself to sleep or get upset by the life that I lead Because I accept the fact that it is simply love." –Jenna Anne
   • "I believe that no one should ever have to choose between a career we love and living our lives with authenticity and integrity." –Selisse Berry
   • "Real God and Love, too, I knew, must be more like the mother who stretches her mind around queerness and polyamory and all the limits of gender, and keeps inviting the children back who’ve hurt her or done what she never would have—a mom who believes in Love." –R/B Mertz
   • "I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line." –Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
   • "Commit to loving yourself completely. It’s the most radical thing you will do in your lifetime." –Andrea Gibson
   • "The first time in my life I’d ever rested, / the first time I didn’t have to play a role / I’d never really wanted to get. / That’s the medicine it is / to be finally seen by someone." –Andrea Gibson
   • "I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that’s ever happened to me has taught me compassion." –Ellen DeGeneres
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Section 2 of 8:

Lesbian Coming-Out Quotes & Sayings

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1. These quotes are about the pride, courage, and strength necessary to be who you are. If you're looking for the right quote to share when you come out yourself, these will do the trick—but even if not, you can still take comfort in the pride and resilience these quotes and sayings express:

   • "My feelings for Ellen overrode all of my fear about being out as a lesbian. I had to be with her, and I just figured I’d deal with the other stuff later." –Portia de Rossi
   • One day we won’t come out. We will just say we are in love and that will be all that matters.
   • "Only you know who you were born to be and you need to be free to be that person." –Ruby Rose
   • "How could Hell be any worse than trying to live with all these secrets? At least in Hell, if you were on fire, you didn’t have to pretend you weren’t." –R/B Mertz
   • "I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act." –Janet Mock
   • Love is too beautiful to be hidden in a closet.
   • "I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death." –Alison Bechdel
   • "You don’t necessarily have to be out-loud out. You can kind of silently celebrate if you would like." –Chappell Roan
   • "In reality, it was just people talking to each other, through centuries—carvings on walls, poems, radio waves, TV signals, and the internet—telling stories to show each other what we can survive, the chorus of survivors, of bad women and queers, of teachers and artists, repeating that same thing over and over in all the different languages: Get up, come out: resurrect yourself." –R/B Mertz
   • "I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own." –Audre Lorde
   • "What a tiny life we’d live if we fashioned ourselves to the comforts of others." –J.J. Arias
   • "My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you." –Audre Lorde
   • "Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid." –Jeanette Winterson
   • "When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her." –Adrienne Rich
   • It is not a matter of choosing girls over boys; it’s choosing happiness over society.
   • "Darling, I want my gay rights now." –Marsha P. Johnson
   • "The whole issue of sexuality is so grey. I’m just trying to acknowledge that fluidity, that greyness, which has always existed. But maybe only now are we allowed to start talking about it." –Kristen Stewart
   • "There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are." –Tammy Baldwin
   • "No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow." –Alice Walker
   • "To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous." –Elizabeth Gilbert
   • Take our "What Type of Lesbian Am I?" quiz now!

Section 3 of 8:

Funny Lesbian Quotes & Sayings

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1. 
   Laughter and liberation go hand in hand. Some of the most inspiring WLW quotes have a humorous edge. Check out some of our favorite funny lesbian quotes and sayings below:

   • I kissed a boy and I didn’t like it.
   • "Thank God I'm gay." –Chappell Roan
   • Being lesbian is fun and games until she won’t kill the spider either.
   • "Asking who’s the man and who’s the woman in a same-sex relationship is like asking which chopstick is the fork." –Ellen DeGeneres
   • "If you want to be my friend, you must do two things. First, forget I am a lesbian. And second, never forget I am a lesbian." –Linda Geraci
   • "[Looking like a straight girl] means wearing clothes that seek and destroy comfort. These are garments designed by gay men to attract heterosexual men. The straight girl is simply the hanger for an inside joke." –Mary Dugger
   • "I’m never dating a man again. I’m not attracted to them, I don’t like having sex with them, I don’t think they understand me, I don’t think they make good art." –Chappell Roan
   • "So, let me get this straight: You want me to stop being a lesbian and being attracted to women because it is a 'sin'? Last time I checked, when you lie you are sinning. Sure, I could tell you I am no longer a lesbian or that I am no longer attracted to women and am straight, or I could even tell you the moon is made of cheese. I could tell you many things, but the moon will still not be made of cheese, and I will still not be attracted to men. I could tell you a lie in order to placate you, but isn’t the truth supposed to set me free? I choose truth over lies any day of the week." –Cristina Marrero
   • "On our second date, she kissed me in a bar. I invited her home. We just caught the F train, which seemed like a good omen." –Alison Bechdel
   • "Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice." –Alison Bechdel
   • "Who wears the pants in our lesbian relationship? We prefer it when neither of us are wearing pants." –Wanda Sykes
   • "I didn't know there were women who wore men's clothes and had men's haircuts. But like a traveler in a foreign country who runs into someone from home - someone they've never spoken to but know by sight - I recognized her with a surge of joy." –Alison Bechdel
   • I’m not a lesbian, but my girlfriend is.
   • The more boys I meet, the more I realize that yeah, I’m for sure a lesbian.
   • We are both "the girl" in the relationship. That’s kinda the point.
   • "How am I supposed to live, laugh, lesbian in these conditions?" –Liz Bertorelli
   • "To be regularly gay was to do every day the gay thing that they did every day. To be regularly gay was to end every day at the same time after they had been regularly gay. They were regularly gay. They were gay every day. They ended every day in the same way, at the same time, and they had been every day regularly gay." –Gertrude Stein
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Section 4 of 8:

Romantic Lesbian Quotes & Sayings

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1. Swoon over these moving and romantic words about lesbian longing. From Sappho and Emily Dickinson to Elizabeth Gilbert and Tig Notaro, queer women writers and famous figures have been pining for other women since the dawn of history—and recording their feelings in words. This list showcases some of the most swoon-worthy quotes we know:

   • "I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away." –Emily Dickinson
   • "Another word for lesbian is: devourer of the dark." –K. Ming Chang
   • "Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me, / Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature…" –Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
   • "Look here Vita—throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads— They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come." –Virginia Woolf
   • "Women alone stir my imagination." –Virginia Woolf
   • "Come with me this morning to the church within our hearts, where the bells are always ringing, and the preacher whose name is Love — shall intercede for us!" –Emily Dickinson
   • "Just to be clear / I don’t want to get out / without a broken heart. / I intend to leave this life / so shattered / there’s gonna have to be / a thousand separate heavens / for all of my flying parts." –Andrea Gibson
   • "To love another woman is to streak naked across the sky, swallow the sun in one bite, and live aflame. To love another woman is to look at yourself in the mirror and determine that you are worthy of the galaxy and its fury." –Gabby Rivera
   • "She enthralls, enslaves me—and her personal self—her body absolute-–is my worship. I feel that to lie with my head on her breast is to feel what life can hold." –Katherine Mansfield
   • "And all this love which you have poured out to me is very bread and wine to my direct need. Always, always I am coming back to you.I kiss your hair, sweetheart." –Margaret Mead
   • "Goodnight now. I am so sleepy—I feel like a moth, with heavy scarlet eyes and a soft cape of down—a moth about to settle in a sweet bush … Would it were—ah, but that’s improper." –Virginia Woolf
   • "Please, in all this muddle of life, continue to be a bright and constant star. Just a few things remain as beacons: poetry, and you, and solitude." –Vita Sackville-West
   • "I don’t wanna be a witness to this life, / I want to be charged and convicted, / ear lifted to her song like a bouquet of yes" –Andrea Gibson
   • "someone will remember us / I say / even in another time." –Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
   • "My sh*tty gay heart did a backflip in my chest." –Kayla Cottingham
   • "I want you. I want you hungrily, frenziedly, passionately. I am starving for you, if you must know it. Not only the physical you, but your fellowship, your sympathy, the innumerable points of view we share. I can’t exist without you, you are my affinity…I want you for my own, I want to go away with you. I must and will and damn the world and damn the consequences and anyone had better look out for themselves who dares to become an obstacle in my path." –Violet Trefusis
   • "may you sleep on the breast of your delicate friend." –Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
   • "Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me— / sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in." –Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
   • "My heart lurches, as if it wants to leave my awful body and go make a home in her." –Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn
   • "I must wait / a few Days / before seeing / you – You are / too momentous. // But remember / it is idolatry, / not indifference." –Emily Dickinson
   • "The ice storm froze the world outside / into a photograph of the past / while I kneeled down and kissed / my future onto your kneecaps. / Two decades talking to Jesus. / That was the first time / I heard him talk back." –Andrea Gibson
   • "That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out." –Andrea Gibson
   • "Without warning as a whirlwind swoops on an oak. Love shakes my heart." –Sappho
   • "We do not decide our hearts." –Caroline Sophia Hamel
   • "I named both of her eyes Forever, and Please Don’t Go." –Mary Lambert
   • Instead of disappearing, she makes me feel reappeared. Reimagined. Her touch shapes me, draws out the boldness that had been hiding in my core.” –Natasha Ngan
   • "When she lowers her eyes, she seems to hold all the beauty in the world between her eyelids; when she raises them, I see only myself in her gaze." –Natalie Clifford Barney
   • "First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man." –Alice Walker, The Color Purple
   • "I should like to creep / Through the long brown grasses / That are your lashes; I should like to poise / On the very brink / Of leaf-brown pools / That are your shadowed eyes; / I should like to cleave / Without sound, / Their gleaming waters, / their unrippled waters, / I should like to sink down / And down / And down / And deeply down." –Angelina Weld Grimké
   • "There are so many things about us that are the same. Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh…The bolts of your collarbone undo me." –Jeanette Winterson
   • Still looking for your perfect match? Find her with our lesbian dating simulator.

Section 5 of 8:

Lesbian Quotes & Sayings about Relationships

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1. 
   Lesbian relationships are beautiful and inspiring—just like these quotes. Share a quote with your partner about what an honor it is to move through life by their side, or just read these quotes about the joy and pride of lesbian love to inspire and move you:

   • "I do. / But the motherf**kers say we can’t. / ‘cause you’re a girl and I’m a girl / or at least something close. / So the most we can hope for is an uncivil union in Vermont / but I want church bells—I want rosary beads; / I want Jesus on his knees. / I want to walk down the aisle while all the patriarchy smiles. / That’s not true. / But I do want to spend my life with you." –Andrea Gibson
   • "I tell her I sing roses too, / My hands in the dirt where she lives forever." –Sappho
   • "In your eyes I see myself become what I always dreamed I could be." –Isabel Miller
   • "And a naïve part of me thinks that since we have made it this far, we will make it forever. If we existed for even a second, we could exist eternally." –Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn
   • "I have always liked the idea of spending the last years of my life on a beautiful beach. With the love of a good woman." –Taylor Jenkins Reid
   • "I didn’t know how to not be with her." –Tig Notaro
   • "An element of fantasy is needed when falling in love and I was unable to find the fantasy element with any of the male gender." –Novala Takemoto, Missin'
   • "Labels and boxes don’t matter any more when you always want to be with someone, hear her whole life story, or trace your fingers through her hair when you’re worn out after making love." –Intan Paramaditha
   • "Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral. And it's relentless." –Leah Raeder, Black Iris
   • "No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city." –Adrienne Rich
   • "Women have married because it was necessary, in order to survive economically, in order to have children who would not suffer economic deprivation or social ostracism, in order to remain respectable, in order to do what was expected of women because coming out of 'abnormal' childhoods they wanted to feel 'normal,' and because heterosexual romance has been represented as the great female adventure, duty, and fulfillment. We may faithfully or ambivalently have obeyed the institution, but our feelings—and our sensuality—have not been tamed or contained within it." –Adrienne Rich
   • "She’s my role model, my traveling companion, my most reliable source of light, my fortitude." –Elizabeth Gilbert
   • "I’d never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn’t seem so strange." –Cynthia Nixon
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Section 6 of 8:

Lesbian Song Lyrics

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1. Sing along to your favorite WLW anthems. Lesbian singers like Chappell Roan, Tegan and Sara, and King Princess haven't just translated their LGBTQ+ pride into words, they also set music to them. Here are some of our go-to lesbian anthems and love songs:

   • "Baby, why don't you come over? / Red wine supernova, falling into me. / I don't care that you're a stoner, / Red wine supernova, fall right into me." –Chappell Roan, "Red Wine Supernova"
   • "She was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot, / She showed me things I didn't know, / She did it right there out on the deck: / Put her canine teeth in the side of my neck." –Chappell Roan, "Red Wine Supernova"
   • "Until women can get equal pay for equal work, this is not my America. / Until same gender loving people can be who they are, this is not my America. / Until black people can come home from a police stop without being shot in the head, this is not my America." –Janelle Monáe, "Americans"
   • "Hey, I'm just like you / A little messed up and new." –Tegan and Sara, "Hey, I'm Just Like You"
   • "I'm gonna start an uprising of love." –Melissa Etheridge, "Uprising of Love"
   • "Here comes the heat before we meet, a little bit closer / Here comes the spark before the dark, come a little closer." –Tegan and Sara, "Closer"
   • "Beautiful you, / They got nothing on you. / Yeah, I'm talking to you. / Get out of the blue, / They got nothing on you." –Brandi Carlile & Elton John, "Swing for the Fences"
   • "So tell me why my gods look like you / And tell me why it's wrong." –King Princess, "1950"
   • "I hate it when dudes try to chase me / But I love it when you try to save me." –King Princess, "1950"
   • "Baby, tell me does she love you / Like the way I love you? / Does she stimulate you? / Attract and captivate you? / Tell me, does she miss you? / Existing just to kiss you / Like the way I do?" –Melissa Etheridge, "Like the Way I Do"
   • "Girls / Bring me to my knees." –King Princess, "Girls"
   • "I kissed a girl and I liked it." –Katy Perry
   • "Girls like girls like boys do, nothing new." –Hayley Kiyoko, "Girls Like Girls"

Section 7 of 8:

Lesbian Movie Quotes

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1. Enjoy these quotes from iconic lesbian films. From But I'm a Cheerleader to Carol and beyond, the number of rom-coms and dramas proudly exploring WLW relationships is only growing—and there are some inspiring, romantic, heartbreaking, and hilarious quotes to be found in many of them:

   • "1,2,3,4, I won't take no anymore. 5,6,7,8, I want you to be my mate. 1,2,3,4, you're the one that I adore. 5,6,7,8, don't run from me 'cause this is fate." –But I'm a Cheerleader
   • "You should know that it is very difficult to sit next to you at dinner and not be able to kiss you." –Happiest Season
   • "I only care about you. If I have you, that's all I need. Be with me." –Happiest Season
   • "Please believe that I would do anything to see you happy. So, I do the only thing I can. I release you." –Carol
   • "I f**king love you, you idiot." –Love Lies Bleeding
   • Jackie: "I don't know what's wrong with me."
     Lou: "There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are the most amazing, most incredible, beautiful person I've ever met in my whole life." –Love Lies Bleeding
   • "I have infinite tenderness for you. I always will. My whole life." –Blue Is the Warmest Colour
   • "I miss you. I miss not touching each other. Not seeing each other, not breathing in each other. I want you. All the time. No one else." –Blue Is the Warmest Colour
   • "I think you know immediately. As soon as your eyes... Then everything that happens from then on just proves that you have been right in that first moment. When you suddenly realize that you were incomplete and now you are whole…" –Imagine Me & You
   • Rachel: Now, tell me about the lily."
     Luce: "The lily means... the lily means 'I dare you to love me.'" –Imagine Me & You
   • "In solitude, I felt the liberty you spoke of. But I also felt your absence." –Portrait of a Lady on Fire
   • "I really value when people use violence for me. It's actually one of my love languages." –Bottoms
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Section 8 of 8:

Short Lesbian Quotes & Sayings for Bios

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1. 
   Proudly proclaim your lesbian status in your Instagram bio. These short quotes were practically made to be shown off in your social media or dating app bio, or in a cute ig post caption—along with some cute queer emoji, of course.

   • Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not. 🌈
   • I like girls in a gay way. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
   • Women love women better than men can.
   • "I am a rare species, not a stereotype." –Ivan Coyote 💅🌈
   • Sapphic soul 🏳️‍🌈
   • SOME GIRLS LIKE GIRLS. GET OVER IT. 💜🌈
   • "You'd have to stop the world just to stop the feeling." –Chappell Roan, "Good Luck, Babe!"
   • I wasn’t looking for love but she found me. ♥️
   • Just a girl who loves girls 🌈✨
   • "Love is a wild fire that cannot be contained by any mere element known to man." –Cristina Marrero, The Unsung Love Story
   • I may not be perfect but at least I'm not attracted to men.
   • Kissing girls is worth going to hell for 💋
   • I'm a girl who loves a girl and I'm OK with that.
   • "I am not here to entertain straight people." –Sarah Schulman
   • A day without lesbians is like a day without sunshine. ☀️🌈
   • My prince charming is a princess. 👑
   • I'm not like other girls, I like the other girls. 💜
   • 💜 Proud lesbian 🌈

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