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

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.

Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

In fact I have nightmares about having children. I want to carry a baby and feel the life within me and in my dream, I do. But every time after it's born, there's this incredible fear, this pounding pulse of fear. It's a real bad nightmare.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

Democracy is stronger than terrorism, and we will not cower to the terrorists' campaign of fear.

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.

I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.

Right out of high school I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose.

Who sows fear, reaps weapons.

For any new technology there is always controversy and there always some fear associated with it. I think that's just the price of being first sometimes.

Knight without fear and without reproach.