When I was young, I and the whole world thought that all homosexuals were effeminate. And of course they're not. You can just see which people are effeminate; that's the only difference. So, I became a prototype of the effeminate man, because I was conspicuously effeminate. But camp is not something I do, it's something I am.

I don't think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn't something you've done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed.

You don't have to do anything.

It may be true that artists adopt a flamboyant appearance, but it's also true that people who look funny get stuck with the arts.

Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change; they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.

It's written into the Constitution that you're allowed to pursue happiness. In England it would be considered a frivolous objective.

Because it is in the nature of things that they become extreme, we have passed down from manliness to cruelty. If I had been told when I was 20 that there was a tavern in the town where the brave and the cruel were gathered together, I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.