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

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

Homophobia is just that: a phobia.

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

Finally, fighting for gay rights, speaking out in various places and making friends, men and women, was great.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Men are actually the weaker sex.