I had been found in a mud puddle at 4:30 in the morning.

It was a pleasure to be a gay eyesore.

If there is a gay uniform, the differences are in how each man coordinates the details: the brand and cut of the jeans, the design of belts and boots, the haircut, the number and size of earrings.

When you've grown sick of reading and bug-eyed from watching TV, when your friends are all visited out, no words can adequately praise the link to the outside world provided by your parents and family.

I wore a woman's antique fur jacket to my high school junior prom.

I am now faced with mortality. Definitely not the most generous move.

As I was coming out of the closet, our car was hurtling over an embankment.

My gayness became quietly accepted and, shock of all shocks, life went on.

Sexuality is a private matter; some believe that broadcasting it destroys the very things that make it sacred.

As anyone who is gay will confirm, being that way is not something you become, it is a set of emotional and physical responses that just are.

Gay culture is surviving and thriving. Some activists believe the recent rise in homophobic violence might be a gauge of the success of positive gay images.

Coming out is a means of redefining oneself, of claiming membership in a lifestyle and a social order with distinct values. Chief among these values is honesty.

Proclaiming a sexual preference is something that straight men never really have to bother with.

My reasons for declaring a sexual preference had to do less with the pursuit of personal freedom than with the lust for pure shock value.

Coming out involves varying degrees of difficulty that are affected by class, race, religion, and geography.

Perhaps there is no agony worse than the tedium I experienced waiting for Something to Happen.

David Bowie and Boy George created a safely contained theatrical expression of gay style.

I had been found in a mud puddle at 4:30 in the morning.

I believed I was invincible.

One result of An American Family was that I became a gay role model.

For the naysayers that claimed 'American Family' revealed us to be vacant, unloving, uncaring morons of the materialistic '70s, this image will be proven wrong when Mom and Dad remarry... Make no mistake. This is not to emphasize the sadness of my demise but rather emphasize the love of my family and friends.

Gay culture is in a coming-out process of its own. From out of the closets in the '60s, the culture moved onto the disco floors of the '70s and through the hospital wards of the '80s and onwards to the streets.

I don't know if hep C is called 'the quiet killer,' but it easily could be, so unnoticeably does it nestle into your body before crankin' up the screws and letting you race to figure out what's going on.

In 1970, television ate my family. The Andy Warhol prophecy of 15 minutes of fame for any and everyone blew up on our doorstep.

Scrawling 'I'm gay' in lipstick on your parents' bedroom mirror may demonstrate a personal signature of the highest style, but is not particularly sensitive to their feelings. Upon hearing me utter those words almost twenty years ago, my own mother did what and self-respecting middle-class mom would do: went directly into a seizure.

The bulk of my learning - if I may call it such - has come within the past three months, after I became a part of the fragile body of patients who make up an AIDS hospice. Here, surrounded by teams of supportive nurses, attentive doctors, and interns, one gently comes upon his own strengths and shortcomings.

Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.

As anyone who is gay will confirm being that way is not something you become it is a set of emotional and physical responses that just are.

I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father's equal, and I never loved any other man as much.

Anything that reduces war-related destruction should not be considered altogether immoral.

Time sometimes passes quite quickly.

A man's life is about keeping rules, breaking them, and making new ones.

At least I had that, one guy understood me.

In school, you learn how to learn.

I loved the world of roller derby because I thought it was such an empowering metaphor, that you get out there and do it. It's such a rocker, athletic, capable, cool exhibitionist sport; it's about this great sort of camaraderie.

Now, if you are like me - if you are like practically anybody in America - then you probably hold some negative opinions about the French, based upon movies, rumors, recent headlines, unfortunate run-ins with Parisian waiters, or... you know... all that unpleasantness surrounding the Vichy regime.

The Universe is about maintaining balance not fairness. It is by means of balance that true fairness exists in the Universe.

I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything.

It is easy to club people together, but there are bound to be influences of authors you've read. I grew up reading fast paced authors such as Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer, but to say I'm one of them isn't true; my style is intrinsically my own.

Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand or a mouth on a mouth.

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion.

I'm so not macho. It's crazy. My man cave is so not a man cave.

As long as I can sing and hit the notes, I want to do that.

In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

It's amazing what some people read into songs.

The sound has grown and sweetened over the years as well, and you can hear it on many of my recordings and, most likely, will see and hear me playing it if you come to a live show.

A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You can do geography, as Faulkner did, or you can dwell on a particular period. It provides the same framework.

I am someone who, from a very young age, was a huge fan of DC Comics.