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There's a cute little coffee table book edited by Teresa Theophano called Queer Quotes. The book is comprised of quotations from LGBT people about "coming out and culture, love and lust, politics and pride and much more".

To mention a few names:
Paula Gunn Allen, Dorthy Allison, Pedro Almodovar, James Baldwin, Tallulah Bankhead, Simone de Beauvoir, Sandra Bernhard, Chastity Bono, Susie Bright, Truman Capote, Kate Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Leslie Feinberg, Harvey Fierstein, Barney Frank, Jewelle Gomez, Larry Kramer, Liberace, Greg Louganis, Audre Lorde, Sir Ian McKellen, Isaac Mizrahi, Boy George, Armistead Maupin, Martina Navratilova, Adrienne Rich, Marlon Riggs, Eleanor Roosevelt, Urvashi Vaid, Gore Vidal, John Waters, Edmund White and Oscar Wilde.


I thought it'd been fun to start a daily or weekly thread in which we discuss each quote. It's divided up into categories of sorts starting with "All Things Queer". Here we go...



"As everyone knows, a fag is a homosexual gentleman who has just left the room."
~Truman Capote

Updated On: 3/8/08 at 04:40 PM

It's far more offensive when it's said behind your back. I couldn't give a s**t what people say to my face.

Updated On: 1/27/09 at 06:40 PM

I find it funny, because although most of my friends would know I'm gay, the guys in school wouldn't. It's actually quite funny when I'm in a group of people, some of whom know and some of whom don't, and somebody who doesn't know says something completely out of place, and the rest of us are all thinking the same thing.

It also lets me see what certain people would be like behind my back if they knew about me. Which hurts a little.

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"In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the idea should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation." ~ Simone de Beauvoir


"The black community is only now beginning to realize the extent of bisexuality and homosexuality within our community, but it's here. It's been here for a long time and it's going to continue to be here. We might as well acknowledge it and move on." ~ Marlon Riggs


"It's no wonder we know how to dress; we've spent centuries in closets." ~ Isaac Mizrahi


"If I went onstage in a business suit, they would think I was crazy. It's like putting Marlene Dietrich in a housedress." ~ Liberace


"Black men loving Black men is a call to action, an acknowledgement of responsibility. We take care of our own kind when the night grows cold and silent. These days the nights are coldblooded and the silence echoes with complicity." ~ Joseph Beam

Love that Harvey quote--it should be posted above every urinal in every boy bar in town.

And Mr. Bronski, there is a great deal of pleasure in being gay, but there's just as much-if not more-pain.

"If I believe in anything, rather than God, it's that I am part of something that goes back to Antigone and that whatever speaks the truth of our hearts can only make us stronger. We must be the last generation to live in silence." ~ Paul Monette


"As Socrates said, 'The untelevised life is not worth living.'" ~ Gore Vidal


"I truly believe that bisexuality is the natural human condition." ~ Lillian Faderman


"I attribute a large part of the ignorance in schools to homophobia, because kids are fearful of being perceived as being different, even when they aren't actually gay. Teachers have to challenge bigotry in all its forms, because bigotry is a way of making people act in ways that are not who they are." ~ Kevin Jennings


"If I had to choose one particular thing I've done and put it at the pinnacle of all which I'm proud, it would be 'Gay is Good'. It encapsulates, in a way that has been taken up by others, everything that I stand for and have worked for." ~ Frank Kameny, on the phrase he coined in the 1960s

"Wake Up. I need to use your mouth."


Me, 2004

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"Gay liberation should not be a license to be a perpetual adolescent. If you deny yourself commitment then what can you do with your life?" ~ Harvey Fierstein

That is one of my new favorites.

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"I want society to cease viewing gays as defined by our sexuality, and at the same time I want the freedom to be as unabashedly sexual as I wish." ~ Vito Russo


"How long will it be before [gay] isn't the adjective, the descriptive term?...How about human being, mother, grandmother? How about just my name?" ~ Margarethe Cammermeyer


"I hate it when gay men are referred to as boys. And never more than when I hear grown gay men refer to themselves that way." ~ Richard Gollance


"I am not especially defined by my sex life, nor complete without it." ~ Paula Gunn Allen

”I could love anything on earth that appeared to wish it.” ~ Lord Byron

”I have waited years for you who wants to flaunt me on her arm, my face radiant with desire, as if I’d put my face deep into a lily, heavy with pollen, and raised it to you, smeared and smelly with butter yellow, sated but not yet satisfied.” ~ Minnie Bruce Patt

”When you’re in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.” ~ Natalie Clifford Barney

”I’m now clear in my mind that I do love you. If you won’t come back or let me join you, you’re committing a crime.” ~ Arthur Rimbaud, to Paul Verlaine

”We must declare ourselves, become know; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself. ~ Gore Vidal

Sometimes it takes a fairy.