At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later.

At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later.

When we are young... we often experience things in the present with a nostalgia-in-advance, but we seldom guess what we will truly prize years from now.

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

I'm an atheist, I always thought, 'This is it.' If there is going to be a heaven, it should be on earth. I feel much happier than most people. I'm fairly stoic about death, but I'm not keen on dying if it's going to be long and protracted. I don't have dark nights of the soul, except occasionally. I'm such a little busy bee.

The scorn directed against drags is especially virulent; they have become the outcasts of gay life, the "queers" of homosexuality.In fact, they are classic scapegoats. Our old fears about our sissiness, still with us though masked by the new macho fascism, are now located, isolated, quarantined through our persecution of the transvestite.

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.