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.

Many people secretly think that gays are a lot happier than they are, and want to punish them.

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

If every time you engage in a sex act, you go into a confession box, you will never accept your own sexuality.

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

All love is original, no matter how many other people have loved before.

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

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

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.

All who love are conspirators.

Men are actually the weaker sex.

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.

Hope never abandons you, you abandon it.

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.

The world will step aside for nearly anyone who has the courage of his of her opinions.

Interestingly, the best way to promote intimacy is to demand it.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Coming out to gays is a way of affirming sanity and self-worth.

Homophobia is just that: a phobia.

There is no universal coming out process, so far as I know.

An essential idea is that if you give to some person or endeavor in life, you will make that more important.

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

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.

But the cure for most obstacles is, Be decisive.

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.

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.

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.

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.