"The only queer people are those who don't love anybody."
— Rita Mae Brown

"There are 6 admonishments in the Bible concerning homosexual activity and our enemies are always throwing them up to us usually in a vicious way and very much out of context. What they don't want us to remember is that there are 362 admonishments in the Bible concerning heterosexual activity. I don't mean to imply by this that God doesn't love straight people, only that they seem to require a great deal more supervision."
— Lynn Lavner

"Self pity becomes your oxygen. But you learned to breathe it without a gasp. So, nobody even notices you're hurting."
— Paul Monette

"I've had more difficulty accepting myself as bisexual than I ever did accepting that I was a lesbian. It felt traitorous. A few years ago, I admitted to myself that I was still interested in men in more than a "Brad Pitt is slick hot sexy" kind of way. But I worried whatmy friends, exes, and the Community would think. I never even broached the subject with my parents. Because what bothered me the most was that people would think that being a lesbian had been a phase for me, when that was so very not the case. What I feared was that I would no longer be part of a community, that I might be seen with my boyfriend and not be recognized as something not the same. "
— R. Gay (First Person Queer: Who We Are)

"For the first time in my life, I said the words, “I need a drink.”"
— Cristina Marrero (The River: The Unsung Love Story)

"You had to be willing to fight in order for a love story to last a life time."
— Cristina Marrero (The River: The Unsung Love Story)

"My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one."
— Natalie Clifford Barney

"Love is a wild fire that cannot be contained by any mere element known to man."
— Cristina Marrero (The River: The Unsung Love Story)

"Together, in that room, our childhood notions of love melted away. We discovered love was not a fairytale. Sometime there were no happy endings, and when there were, you needed to work like hell to keep the happiness alive"
— Cristina Marrero (The River: The Unsung Love Story)

"Gender can be mixed, combined, chosen and tasted... I'll be in the kitchen today whipping up something new!"
— Cody Hooper-Kaufmann

"My first female lover was a Jewish woman. She was butch, but not in a swaggering macho way- she could pass as a yeshiva boy, pale and intense. Small, almost fragile, she exuded a powerful sense of herself. She had not been to a synagogue in years, but kept the law of kashrut, and taught me my first prayers in Hebrew. She cooked, she read, she ironed her dress shirts and polished her boots meticulously, and admired femme women enormously. She was also the first person ever- including myself- to bring me to multiple orgasms. She taught me to ask for what I wanted in bed, then encouraged me to expect it from her and future lovers. She taught me to get her off with fingers, tongue, lips, sex toys, and my voice. She showed me how to masturbate in different positions, and fisted me during my menstrual cramps to provide an internal massage- and to demonstrate that a sexual act without orgasm was also an acceptable, intimate act. She never separated sexuality from the rest of her life; it was as integral to her as her Judaism.

This was how I wanted to be. Not just sexually, although certainly that way too. This is how I wanted to move through the world.

-- Karen Taylor (from "Daughters of Zelophehad") "
— Lawrence Schimel (First Person Queer: Who We Are)

"In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that just amused people. And most of the people that come and watch the gay Halloween parade, where all those excesses are on display, those are straight families, and they think it's funny. But what people don't think is so funny is when two middle-aged lawyers who are married to each other move in next door to you and your wife and they have adopted a Korean girl and they want to send her to school with your children and they want to socialize with you and share a drink over the backyard fence. That creeps people out, especially Christians. So, I don't think gay marriage is a conservative issue. I think it's a radical issue."
— Edmund White

"I am not a proponent of the We're Just Like You Except For What We Do In Bed philosophy - it is nonetheless true that in some ways our lives are not always all that dissimilar. I, too, walk my dog and worry about the consistency of his poop- even if I may share my dog with my queer femme ex-partner who maintains a separate household, which is next door to her best friend who is my former lover and owned boy and also a transsexual to boot."
— S. Bear Bergman (from First Person Queer)

"See, the institutions and specialist, experts, you see. Yes, yes,
experts, indeed. See, they would have us believe that there is an order
to art. An explanation. Humans are odd creatures in that way. Always
searching for a formula. Yes, a formula to create an expected norm for
unexplainable greatness. A cook book you might say. Yes, a recipe
book for life, love, and art. However, my dear, let me tell you. Yes,
there is no such thing. Every individual is unique in their own design,
as intended by God himself. We classify, yes, always must we classify,
for if not, then we would be lost, yes lost now wouldn't we?
Classification, order, expectations, but alas, we forget. For what is art,
if not the out word expression of an artist. It is the soul of the artisan
and if his expectations are met, than who are we to judge whether his
work be art or not?"
— Cristina Marrero (The River: The Unsung Love Story)