A peacock escaped from the Central Park Zoo and wandered around the city. Either that or I just saw a pigeon on his way to a gay pride parade.

To hear two American men congratulating each other on being heterosexual is one of the most chilling experiences – and unique to the United States. You don’t hear two Italians sitting around complimenting each other because they actually like to go to bed with women. The American is hysterical about his manhood.

I grew up in one of the most socially conservative neighborhoods in Ohio, and my parents were traditional Catholics. But in her old age, my mother got her home health care from a guy who was gay, who was wonderful to her. Before she died, she rode a float in the Cincinnati Gay Pride Parade.

I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated all my homosexual patients are quite sick – to which I finally replied so are all my heterosexual patients.

Gay life in 1970 was very bleak, compartmentalized. You didn’t take it to work. You had to really lead a double life. There were bars, but you sort of snuck in and snuck out. Activism and gay pride simply didn’t exist. I don’t even think the word ‘gay’ was in existence.

When I first started teaching at Berkeley in 1958, I could not announce that I was gay to anybody, though probably quite a few of my fellow teachers knew.

Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

I have hardly any friends who aren’t gay

Everybody‘s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

He’s trying to do info-tainment. He doesn’t really want to talk about trans issues, he wants to sensationalize my life and not really talk about the work that I do and what the purpose of me writing this book was about.

Being gay is natural. Hating gay is a lifestyle choice.

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

As for our garments, my Mother did not only delight to see us neat and cleanly, fine and gay, but rich and costly: maintaining us to the heighth of her estate, but not beyond it.

Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeonholes.

There’s this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That’s completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.

I’ve never really worked on them. Just once in a while one hits me and makes me laugh. My Al Gore was sort of like a gay Gomer Pyle.

I think that the longer I look good, the better gay men feel.

All over the country, they’re reading about me, and the story doesn’t center on me being gay. It’s just about a gay person who is doing his job.

The diagnosis of homosexuality as a “disorder” is a contributing factor to the pathology of those homosexuals who do become mentally ill…. Nothing is more likely to make you sick than being constantly told that you are sick.

I’m used to being in the minority. I’m a left-handed, gay Jew. I’ve never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.

If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country.

So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.

I’ve done the gay, over-the-top guy. I want to jump into another show where I wear pants for the majority of the time.

The Kinsey Institute says gay men have bigger sex organs. Hence the origin of gay pride.

Judy Garland’s father was gay. That seems to be the consensus. They left Minnesota and went to California because he got caught with some boy backstage.

In the 1980s, there weren’t a lot of role models for gay teenagers.

I’m not sure when I first knew that I was gay.

In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Anton Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!

Gay pride’s beautiful. If somebody needs to be expressing that, then it’s a positive thing.

I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style.

If there is a substantial difference between a gay couple and a childless heterosexual couple, I’m unable to see it.

Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea.

I was raised thinking I’d burn in hell for being gay, but I didn’t have a choice. It’s just who I am.

We are better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history.

But it’s amazing how many people think that gay men should slink off into the shadows when it comes to having friendships with children.

I had a friend write me that our music was being played at Gay Pride in New York, which is a big compliment. In the biggest city in the country with the most culture and the most grit – I love it.

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?

Life is only complete when your loved ones know you. When they know your true feelings, when they know who and how you love. Life is simple when your secret is gone. Gone is the pain that lurks in the stomach at work, the pain from avoiding questions, and at last the pain from hiding such a deep secret.

The Lord is my Shepherd and he knows I’m gay.

What are you trying to protect heterosexual marriages from? There isn’t a limited amount of love in Iowa. It isn’t a non-renewable resource. If Amy and Barbara or Mike and Steve love each other, it doesn’t mean that John and Mary can’t.

It was a pleasure to be a gay eyesore.

Gay icons usually have some tragedy in their lives, but I’ve only had tragic haircuts and outfits.

I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn’t.

Why can’t they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are just afraid of a thousand guys with M16s going, “Who’d you call a faggot?”

Gay sex is a veritable breeding ground for disease.

Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking.

I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960’s, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community.

If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters.

At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won’t be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.

I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason.

Never be bullied into silence.

I think everyone should be with who they love. I don’t want to be controversial or stir up a bunch of trouble but people are going to love who they are going to love. I think gay couples should be allowed to marry. They should suffer just like us heterosexuals. Ha ha ha!

If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would pretty much be left with Let’s Make a Deal.

To me, doing a gay pride show is one of the most fun things. My first show that paid more than $10,000 was in a gay club on New Year’s Eve in San Francisco.

Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.

I’m for human lib, the liberation of all people, not just black people or female people or gay people.

He [Tinky Winky] is purple – the gay-pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle – the gay pride symbol.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.

I’ve had so many interviews where the last question is, Are you gay? I had to find very creative ways to say that I was gay, but that I wasn’t going to talk about it.

Gays are the best, though – we just did Gay Pride in Long Beach and in Tampa. And they’re the best audience. They’re so enthusiastic. They come dressed up – it’s really fun. They’re crazy and I love them. They’re sweet as can be. Even my macho husband, he has a great time, too. He’s so cool, he doesn’t care. He loves them.