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

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.

When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!

My father was often angry when I was most like him.

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.

My mother is Irish, my father is black and Venezuelan, and me - I'm tan, I guess.

My father was a police officer before he retired. One of my brothers is also a police officer, and I think they kind of expected I would do something along those lines, like become a fireman or something.

The fame aspect of winning the Masters... besides being married and becoming a father, that's a strong third there.

I'd rather be David Ladd's father than Alan Ladd any day.

I hated Chris, my brother. I would pull his hair and kick him, until one day my father gave him permission to fight back. I'll be apologizing to him for the rest of my life.

Being a father, well, I don't know if this is a change, but it makes me want to get out of here faster. Get off the clock. Just 'cause the baby is my reason for living, my reason for coming to work.

I would not be gotten into a schoolhouse until I was eight years old. Nor did I accomplish much after I started. I doubt if I had gone to school six months in all when my father died. I was fourteen at the time.

Therefore, I do not wish to consider any proposition to cede any portion of our tribal holdings to the Great Father.