I now realize that I am a gay man before anything else. Other gays may think they're a Jew first, or black, or a banker, but I'm gay.

This is always history's greatest failure, its inability to believe what it sees, what, almost always, someone sees.

I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we're better than other people. I really do. I think we're smarter and more talented and more aware. I do, I totally do. I really do think all of these things. And I try very hard to remember all this.

I've spent fifteen years of my life fighting for our right to be free and make love whenever, wherever... And you're telling me that all those years of what being gay stood for is wrong... and I'm a murderer. We have been so oppressed! Don't you remember how it was? Can't you see how important it is for us to love openly, without hiding and without guilt?

I don't mind about the dead ones. They're dead. The worst of it is, they cling to the living and won't let go.

By nature, Im an optimistic person. No one believes it, but I am.

I forgot that San Francisco is not an angry city like New York. Gays have gotten what they wanted there over the years, unlike New York, where we had to fight for everything.