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.

But the cure for most obstacles is, Be decisive.

Men spend their whole lives showing that they're strong and silent. They fight for independence the way women struggle to connect.

I am very proud of being the one to have coined the word.

My father was a pedant and a bully who cared about nobody, and I was not to see him until I was eighteen.

It wouldn't have mattered to my mother if I married a black, was gay, lived in a commune or wore a dress.

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.

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.

All love is original, no matter how many other people have loved before.

All who love are conspirators.

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.

The roots of homophobia are fear. Fear and more fear.

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.

Men are actually the weaker sex.

People have known of Shakespeare's homosexuality down through the ages.

I didn't grow up with any concept of people being deviants unless they mistreated others.

Interestingly, the best way to promote intimacy is to demand it.

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.

And I've known people who came out with a sense of torture.

What worse illness can there be than acute conventionality. You should pray every night that you don't wake up with it.

I felt like an apostle of the obvious and people imagined that I was doing something daring.

There is no universal coming out process, so far as I know.

You would be better off in exile than priding yourself on be like everyone else.

We are constantly creating ourselves by what we move toward or away from.

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.

We're all here at the same time and we should celebrate that.

As I said, men value their independence in a weird way, above practically everything.

If every time you engage in a sex act, you go into a confession box, you will never accept your own sexuality.

Many people secretly think that gays are a lot happier than they are, and want to punish them.

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.

Hope never abandons you, you abandon it.

Every man wants to feel that his woman would love him apart from anything else.

An essential idea is that if you give to some person or endeavor in life, you will make that more important.

Homophobia is just that: a phobia.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.