Rat Bohemia Quotes

“It drives me crazy how quickly the great ones get canonized. 'Blah-blah-blah is such a terrible loss.' Does that mean that the death of one mediocre slob is not as terrible? Do fags have to be geniuses to justify living?”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“Straight people are the most pathetic of all. I’ve never seen such a miserable group of people in my life. They don’t know anything about themselves”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“Paying for your lover’s funeral is the gay version of a bar mitzvah. It is how you know that you have become a man.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“Nowadays you have to pay a very high price to become a bohemian.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“Nothing is ever resolved,” Rita said, tired. “That's one of those fake concepts. How can you resolve with a man dead at thirty-four? What kind of peace can you make with that? Lately I’ve been thinking that the conflict is for the best. Because then we are not pretending that anything about this can ever be reasonable.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“This was the kind of girl who gestured big and talked big and showed her emotions big, but she wasn’t really showing anything. All her actions turned out to be one big flirt. But, if you paid attention, as I did, it became obvious that she was flirting with no one. She was keeping all her real passion on reserve. That’s how I knew she was a lesbian.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“Today, the West Village is predominantly a straight neighborhood, and the gay property owners who remain there are elitist to the point that they have a famously antagonistic relationship with the young black gay men and lesbians who have socialized on the streets and piers of the West Village since World War II. Their gay predecessors, who died of AIDS, socialized on those same streets and piers in one of the most well-known public sex communities in American history. With their disappearance, gay life in the West Village is expected to take place indoors, and thus out of sight, by people who are white and upper-class.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“At least 75,000 New Yorkers have died of AIDS, which is about twenty percent of the entire number of Americans who have died from it. Compare this to the 3,000 who perished at the World Trade Center. Where is our memorial? Our federal aid to survivors and damaged communities? Our Congressional investigation?”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“That night both of us were ashamed. Not only showing our masochism but even worse, not being able to really do it well. We made love again in the bathtub and her halfhearted thrashing became a faded memory.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“Thats why we’ll never get rid of homophobia in this country. The brothers and sisters of homosexuals have too much at stake.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“Right now, when I think of all my AIDS dead, one of the things they all have in common is about forty conversations just like the one Dave and I had, where each guy talked about death in his own way. Later, they get sick and die in very predictable patterns. Lets face it, this death itself is no longer extraordinary, emotionally, to me.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“David is very concerned about being remembered. I’m concerned about remembering because, after all, I’m going to be left behind. People we know die all the time and there is really no way to react. What can you do? Freak out every day? David brings memory up all the time. I can see how appalled he is at how little any of us react to AIDS deaths. He’s focused a lot of worry on being forgotten.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“An apartment in New York City tells many truths. It shows where you really stand, relationally. It shows when you came, how much you had, and what kind of people you knew. Her apartment was lonely.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia

“I don’t care to know what the reason is that I am gay. But when it comes to being a Jew who only has one God, I know for sure that I was born that way.”
― Sarah Schulman, Rat Bohemia