Gay Writers Quotes & Sayings

A writer will write with or without a movement; but at the same time, for Chicano, lesbian, gay and feminist writers-anybody writing against the grain of Anglo misogynist culture-political movements are what have allowed our writing to surface from the secret places in our notebooks into the public sphere. — Cherrie Moraga

A younger writer, David Leavitt, would later say he envied White for having "such a representative life". And it's true: the zeitgeist blew through White more easily than it did through most people. — Christopher Bram

Maybe the most interesting thing gay writers can do is show the tension between the breadth of gay experiences and the unity of what they have in common. — Vestal McIntyre

Everybody is Other in Maupin. — Christopher Bram

I am very indebted to southern writers and not just Flannery O'Connor. Also Harry Crews, Larry Brown, Tennessee Williams, Barry Hannah and William Gay. — Donald Ray Pollock

In the new style, homosexuals and heterosexuals could be equally unhappy, equally happy, and equally screwed up. — Christopher Bram

We're happier when the assholes are villains. — Christopher Bram

Directly after Rock Hudson's death came the fears that gay writers and actors and directors would be denied jobs; who knew if they would live long enough to finish a feature film or television series? And would the unions force directors to give blood tests and ban actors who tested positive? — Michael Shnayerson

The main focus of Burroughs' Wild Boys tetralogy is an apocalyptic world in which the social order is disrupted enough to allow gay men the possibility of forming seperate communities. The eponymous characters of The Wild Boys band together in the deserts of North Africa to create an alternative to heterosexual society and simultaneously wage war on an intolerant, heterosexual social order that refuses them independence. Burroughs repeatedly links the boys with the youth movements of the late 1960's. He cites Genet's belief that 'it is time for writers to support the rebellion of youth not only with their words but with their presence as well.' The Wild Boys can thus be read as a progression from the riots of Chicago and Stonewall in that they are a radical group of youthful, queer, multiracial revolutionaries who echo Burroughs' own belief that non-violent action is not enough. — Jamie Russell

There are writers who can show you the excellence of their brains and writers who show you the depths of their souls: I don't know any writer who does both at the same time as brilliantly as Roxane Gay. — Elizabeth McCracken

There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour. — Charles Lamb

As surely as I feel love and need for food and water, I feel love and need for God. But these feelings have nothing to do with Supramundane Males planning torments for those who don't abide by neocon "moral values." I hold the evangelical truth of our situation to be that contemporary politicized fundamentalists, including first and foremost those aimed at Empire and Armageddon, need us non-fundamentalists, mystics, ecosystem activists, unprogrammable artists, agnostic humanitarians, incorrigible writers, truth-telling musicians, incorruptible scientists, organic gardeners, slow food farmers, gay restaurateurs, wilderness visionaries, pagan preachers of sustainability, compassion-driven entrepreneurs, heartbroken Muslims, grief-stricken children, loving believers, loving disbelievers, peace-marching millions, and the One who loves us all in such a huge way that it is not going too far to say: they need us for their salvation. — David James Duncan

Gay life is this object out there that's waiting to be written about. A lot of people think we've exhausted all the themes of gay fiction, but we've just barely touched on them. — Edmund White

For them [LGBT group], language has to say exactly what it means. "Why aren't you proud of being gay?" they wanted to know. "Why are you so dark? Why are you so morbid? Why are you so sad? Don't you realize, we're all okay? Let's celebrate that fact." But that is not what writers do. We don't celebrate being "okay." If you want to be okay, take an aspirin. — Richard Rodriguez

Allen Ginsberg startled the audience at OutWrite, the gay literary conference, when he confessed he didn't worry about AIDS since his sex life consisted chiefly of giving blowjobs to straight college boys. — Christopher Bram

Isherwood received bags of fan mail, far more than Tennessee Williams had for Memoirs. There was the sexual and jokey (a fifteen-year-old English schoolboy sent his photo and wrote on the back, "My tits are on fire"). — Christopher Bram

Yeats was straight, but as Auden wrote in 'In Memory of WB Yeats': "You were silly like us. — Christopher Bram

Trust the tale, not the teller. — Christopher Bram

Didn't he know that heterosexuals needed to breed so homosexuals could even exist? — Christopher Bram

Most straight people, and many gay people, especially those who came of age more recently, don't understand how momentous and difficult coming out was to men and women of this generation. It seems so obvious now, so banal. — Christopher Bram

Some of our finest writers, organizers, artists, and scholars in the 60s as well as today, have been lesbian and gay, and history will bear me out. — Audre Lorde

He had spent his life running, secrets spitting at his back. With the coach clocking him, Kevin took flight, his feet hitting the ground and pulling back with tremendous speed. Demons--visions of the eager hands of pretty boys with firm bodies--chased him, chipping away at the space separating them, their claws a whisper away from his flesh. He ran until he felt his lungs would give out; like a madman he ran. — Brenda Sutton Rose

I've been so lucky to work with some great, great writers: Tony Kushner and Yasmina Reza. — Marcia Gay Harden

Sociologists say a neighbourhood is perceived as gay if anywhere between 15 to 25 percent of the residents are homosexual. — Christopher Bram

A work of art doesn't need to provide complete answers in order to succeed. It needs only to excite us into asking questions and give us a place to think about them while we become involved in other people's lives. — Christopher Bram

A text by a minority writer is effective only if it succeeds in making the minority point of view universal. ('The Universal and the Particular')" ... In claiming the lesbian point of view as universal, she overturns the concepts to which we are accustomed. For up to this point, minority writers had to add "the universal" to their points of view if they wished to attain the unquestioned universality of the dominant class. Gay men, for example, have always defined themselves as a minority and never questioned, despite their transgression, the dominant choice. This is why gay culture has always had a fairly wide audience.
[From the Foreword "Changing the Point of View" by Louise Turcotte] — Monique Wittig

We all perform balancing acts between self and family, individual and community, private desire and group expectation. Gay people in particular must break with the groupthink of church and society in order to live their own lives. (It's why you still see half-read copies of Atlas Shrugged on the night tables of otherwise intelligent gay men.) — Christopher Bram

I adore the way fan fiction writers engage with and critique source texts, by manipulating them and breaking their rules. Some of it is straight-up homage, but a lot of [fan fiction] is really aggressive towards the source text. One tends to think of it as written by total fanboys and fangirls as a kind of worshipful act, but a lot of times you'll read these stories and it'll be like 'What if Star Trek had an openly gay character on the bridge?' And of course the point is that they don't, and they wouldn't, because they don't have the balls, or they are beholden to their advertisers, or whatever. There's a powerful critique, almost punk-like anger, being expressed there - which I find fascinating and interesting and cool. — Lev Grossman

I have written this book quicker than any other," she notes in her diary, "[and] it is all a joke; & yet gay & quick reading I think; a writers holiday. I feel more and more sure that I will never write a novel again — Virginia Woolf

Imaginative writers often project their own monsters and meanings on basic facts. — Christopher Bram

An obsessed reader figured that 'Armistead Maupin' was an anagram for 'is a man I dreamt up'. — Christopher Bram

I'm Mexican-American, but for a long time I was pushed out of any references to Mexican-American writers. It was easier to come out as a gay man than it was to come out as a Mexican-American. — John Rechy

Free to call a spade a spade (and a cock a cock). — Christopher Bram

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away. — Mark Haddon

The writers have slowly taken the show, with subjects other gay shows have dived right into, slowly. It was over a year before Will even started to date. — Sean Hayes

I went downstairs to Dad's encyclopedia and looked up HOMOSEXUALITY, but that didn't tell me much about any of the things I felt. What struck me most, though, was that, in the whole long article, the word "love" wasn't used even once. That made me mad; it was as if whoever wrote the article didn't know that gay people actually love each other. The encyclopedia writers ought to talk to me, I thought as I went back to bed; I could tell them something about love. — Nancy Garden

I was influenced by big, strong voices - writers like Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf, Jane Bowles; gay writers like Ed White, Michael Cunningham, Allen Hollinghurst; and contemporary lesbian writers, like Dorothy Allison. — Stacey D'Erasmo

So long as the mental and moral instruction of man is left solely in the hands of hired servants of the public
let them be teachers of religion, professors of colleges, authors of books, or editors of journals or periodical publications, dependent upon their literary incomes for their daily bread, so long shall we hear but half the truth; and well if we hear so much. Our teachers, political, scientific, moral, or religious; our writers, grave or gay, are compelled to administer to our prejudices and to perpetuate our ignorance. — Frances Wright

It took me a long time to realise how many of our classic books on animals were by gay writers who wrote of their relationships with animals in lieu of human loves of which they could not speak. — Helen Macdonald

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away. — William Butler Yeats

It does seem like between the groundbreaking writing of Edmund White's generation and the work of younger gay writers in their twenties and thirties there is a kind of gap. — Garth Greenwell

The different strategies and visions of 'reformists' and 'radicals' are not the only subject of major debate within lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer politics. The fact is that only a tiny minority of non-heterosexuals are involved in any sort of political activism. Various writers and activists have noted with rising alarm an almost mass depoliticisation of lesbian and gay communities in the 1990s. The crass commercialism of the gay scene and the rise of the so-called pink pound and of 'lifestyle' as a signifier of sexual identity (and human worth) has allowed huge profits to be reaped. Playing on the insecurities of people sells 'packages' which can include everything from 'gay apartments' to 'gay holidays' and 'gay clothes' to designer drugs. — Richard Dunphy

Penicillin was as liberating for gay sex as the pill had been for straight sex. — Christopher Bram

What's interesting about the relationship between gay men and women is there can be a lot of affection, but there's a line that you don't cross. — Michael Carroll

Writing, at its best and truest, can offer solace and salvation for both readers and writers. — Roxane Gay

Vidal himself joked that at a certain age lawsuits took the place of sex. — Christopher Bram

Amply described blowjobs and anal scenes may stigmatise gay writers. — Michael Graves

Good prose is solitary work. — Christopher Bram

Some playwrights are obvious influences on younger writers. Arthur Miller (realistic, politically engaged dramas) and Christopher Durang (satirical dark comedies) are examples. But August stands apart, ... He has his special way of seeing things. I remember he and I were at one of those fancy benefits the Rep has. The gay men's chorus was singing, and I was very proud to have brought them into a Rep event. And August says, 'You know, I don't see any black people up there.' That was his focus the lives of black people. — Daniel J. Sullivan

Death is almost never timely, even for the old. — Christopher Bram

Few writers in history have ever been 'politically correct' (a notion that rapidly changes in any case), and there's no reason to imagine that gay writers will ever suit their readers, especially since that readership is splintered into ghettos within ghettos. — Edmund White

There was no point in doing art if you were going to be second-rate. — Christopher Bram

ABC's intelligently hilarious sitcom 'Modern Family' depicts a gay-male marriage in which both partners are refreshingly dimensional, believable human beings. The writers dare to make them flawed and thus fully delineated, but they're not flawed in the silly, stereotypical ways that once dominated such portrayals. — Tom Shales

Art is long and life is short. — Christopher Bram

Cunningham himself said in an interview in Poz that he couldn't help noticing that as soon as he wrote a novel without a blowjob, they gave him the Pulitzer Prize. — Christopher Bram

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things. — Tony Kushner

But when I did think about it and looked at the whole package - the producers behind the show, the writers, the cast I would be working with - I would have been a fool to turn it down just because the role for me was another gay role. — Sean Hayes

Love is benign only when it gets what it wants. Otherwise love can be far more destructive than mindless sex. — Christopher Bram

I saw it all suddenly while I was reading Howards End . . . Forster's the only one who understands what the modern novel ought to be . . . Our frightful mistake was that we believed in tragedy: the point is, tragedy's quite impossible nowadays . . . We ought to aim at being essentially comic writers . . . The whole of Forster's technique is based on the tea-table: instead of trying to screw all his scenes up to the highest possible pitch, he tones them down until they sound like mothers'-meeting gossip . . . In fact, there's actually less emphasis laid on the big scenes than on the unimportant ones: that's what's so utterly terrific. It's the completely new kind of accentuation - like a person talking a different language . . . . — Christopher Isherwood

Ginsberg was the favourite bohemian poet of straight college boys who wanted to transgress, and of gay college boys who were not yet ready to come out. — Christopher Bram

Stories have the ability to take us inside all kinds of life. — Christopher Bram

Dutton, the home of Winnie the Pooh, would find a second identity as a home for gay fiction. — Christopher Bram

Most open letters undoubtedly come from a good place, rising out of genuine outrage or concern or care. There is, admittedly, also a smugness to most open letters: a sense that we, as the writers of such letters, know better than those to whom the letters are addressed. We will impart our opinions to you, with or without your consent. — Roxane Gay