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

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 hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.

I wore a lot of vintage clothing. I dressed like a reporter, with a little card in my hat. I had these fantasies of who I wanted to be, so I'd dress like an explorer, a cowboy. I dressed up like Elton John a lot too. That was another period.

Someday I'm going to go onstage in a dress if I want to.

I'm shy. I can go on a trip for days and not go because I won't sit on a toilet seat on a plane. I'm certainly not going to go on somebody's lawn. Could you imagine, in a cocktail dress?

If Broadway shows charge preview prices while the cast is in dress rehearsal, why should restaurants charge full price when their dining room and kitchen staffs are still practicing?

Style is the dress of thought; a modest dress, Neat, but not gaudy, will true critics please.

When I decided to get married at 40, I couldn't find a dress with the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That's when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business.

I came across awful characters when I got some kind of status and came to Hollywood. Then you have directors trying to sleep with you, assuming that you will do things because of the way you dress.

Oh, completely liberating because even if you don't do a woman right, you just have to put on high heels a wig, a bra and a dress, and I feel liberated.

What to do? We yanked the dress up over her lovely attributes and with the addition of a scarf, the problem was solved. Sorry, guys, blame that stuffy censor. He hated surprises.

Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code?

For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.