My father, who was from a wealthy family and highly educated, a lawyer, Yale and Columbia, walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother, a seventh grade graduate, who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could.
An essential idea is that if you give to some person or endeavor in life, you will make that more important.
But the cure for most obstacles is, Be decisive.
My dearest friend in the movement is Jack Nichols. If there were no such thing as gay or straight, we would still talk and share experiences till the end of time.
As I said, men value their independence in a weird way, above practically everything.
We have many cases of men committing suicide rather than face their own individuality. I know of no case of a woman who committed suicide because she was gay.
The world will step aside for nearly anyone who has the courage of his of her opinions.
Men spend their whole lives showing that they're strong and silent. They fight for independence the way women struggle to connect.
Coming out to gays is a way of affirming sanity and self-worth.
Finally, fighting for gay rights, speaking out in various places and making friends, men and women, was great.
Many people secretly think that gays are a lot happier than they are, and want to punish them.
No man wants to feel that he's there because of his woman's biological clock or because he's filling a job opening for husband or significant other.
I try not to deal with people's hostility, though I must if they have something I need from them, as the professors did at Columbia or my landlord did.
We're all here at the same time and we should celebrate that.
People have known of Shakespeare's homosexuality down through the ages.
Interestingly, the best way to promote intimacy is to demand it.
What worse illness can there be than acute conventionality. You should pray every night that you don't wake up with it.
I didn't grow up with any concept of people being deviants unless they mistreated others.
I'm really not an avowed heterosexual. I'm no more proud of it than of being white or tall.
There is no universal coming out process, so far as I know.
All love is original, no matter how many other people have loved before.
Every man wants to feel that his woman would love him apart from anything else.
We each have a personal myth, a vision of who we really are and what we want. Health means that part of what you want is to give to others.
We are constantly creating ourselves by what we move toward or away from.
The roots of homophobia are fear. Fear and more fear.
Homophobia is just that: a phobia.
Men are actually the weaker sex.
If every time you engage in a sex act, you go into a confession box, you will never accept your own sexuality.
It wouldn't have mattered to my mother if I married a black, was gay, lived in a commune or wore a dress.
All who love are conspirators.
I felt like an apostle of the obvious and people imagined that I was doing something daring.
My father was a pedant and a bully who cared about nobody, and I was not to see him until I was eighteen.
And I've known people who came out with a sense of torture.
I am very proud of being the one to have coined the word.
You would be better off in exile than priding yourself on be like everyone else.
