"Love is a universal language. No matter your gender, everyone deserves love." —Lady Gaga. “If you're gay, God bless you. If you're trans, God bless you. And if you have a problem with them—f* you,” —Charles Barkley. "Being gay is not a crime and we don’t deserve to be judged for our sexual orientation." —Laverne Cox. "Equality to me is a human rights issue. Sexual orientation should not define who we are as people." —Angelina Jolie. "We all deserve to be loved for who we are, regardless of our sexual orientation." —Meghan Markle. "Love has no gender. We all deserve to love and be loved." —Miley Cyrus. "Don’t let anyone make you feel less for who you are. We all deserve love and respect." —Demi Lovato. "Being gay is a gift. It allows us to see and experience life in a unique way." —Anderson Cooper.
The curiosity of the neighbours about you is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it. ― Quentin Crisp Another friend began to say, “Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he …” This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, “I don’t agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him.” ― Quentin Crisp Charisma is the ability to influence without logic. ― Quentin Crisp When I was young, I don’t know how, I spent all my time in the presence of married women telling me their troubles. And when I said ‘Why did you marry?’ they said, ‘Oh I married to get away from home.’ And when I said, ‘And why don’t you leave him?’ they gave the saddest answer in the world: they said, ‘Where would I go?’ So they stayed with men they didn’t like because they had nowhere to go. ― Quentin Crisp The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster. ― Quentin Crisp While I have very little to say in favour of sex (it’s vastly overrated, it's frequently unnecessary, and it’s messy), it is greatly to be preferred to the interminable torments of romantic agony through which two people tear one another limb from limb while professing altruistic devotion. ― Quentin Crisp The key is never, never work. Nothing is more ageing than work. It's not only the strain of getting up in the morning for work, but it's the resentment that settles on your face. ― Quentin Crisp I recommend limiting one’s involvement in other people’s lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. ― Quentin Crisp Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance. Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne. ― Quentin Crisp The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person. For this purpose they frequently choose someone who doesn't even want the beastly thing. ― Quentin Crisp I have known female whores who spoke very bitterly of their calling. “If they don’t like my face, they can put a cushion over it. I know it's not that they're interested in.” But to the boys this profession never seemed shameful. It was their daytime occupations for which they felt the need to apologize. In some instances, these were lower class or humdrum or, worst of all, unfeminine. At least whoring was never that. ― Quentin Crisp The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity. ― Quentin Crisp Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who … have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies. ― Quentin Crisp If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to the unlovable. ― Quentin Crisp The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, “I wish you hadn’t made every line funny. It's so depressing.” ― Quentin Crisp People are not heterosexual or homosexual, just sexual. ― Quentin Crisp
“Vidal gives the impression of believing that the entire heterosexual edifice — registry offices, Romeo and Juliet, the disposable diaper — is just a sorry story of self-hypnosis and mass hysteria: a hoax, a racket, or sheer propaganda.” – Martin Amis about Pamlimpsest (1995), Gore Vidal’s memoir of his first 30 years "There was the way of Right and Left and easy pieties, and then there was Vidal’s way. He said almost nothing about HIV and AIDS, even though his nephew Hugh, who died of AIDS, begged him to. “Gore didn’t think of himself as a gay guy,” says Vidal’s close friend and now-biographer Jay Parini. “It makes him self-hating. How could he despise gays as much as he did? In my company he always used the term ‘fags.’ He was uncomfortable with being gay. Then again, he was wildly courageous.” Fred Kaplan, who wrote a landmark biography of Vidal, says, “He was not interested in making a difference for gay people, or being an advocate for gay rights. There was no such thing as “straight” or “gay” for him, just the body and sex.” How Gay Was Gore Vidal? Certainly I am devoted to promiscuity, and always have been, believed the more you do the better it is for you. I am a great health nut, and sex is, I think, absolutely marvelous for the whole system, tones you up. ― Gore Vidal Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination. ― Gore Vidal Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note. ― Gore Vidal I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. ― Gore Vidal We're supposed to procreate and society, god knows, is ferocious on the subject. Heterosexuality is considered such a great and natural good that you have to execute people and put them in prison if they don’t practice this glorious act. ― Gore Vidal Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, “I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any.” We agreed on nothing, but we never quarrelled once. ― Gore Vidal That peculiarly American religion, President-worship. ― Gore Vidal The reason no one has yet been able to come up with a good word to describe the homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer, etc.) is because he does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about. ― Gore Vidal Precocious talents mature slowly if at all. ― Gore Vidal I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair. ― Gore Vidal Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid. ― Gore Vidal It is reasonable to assume that, by and large, what is not read now will not be read, ever. It is also reasonable to assume that practically nothing that is read now will be read later. Finally, it is not too far-fetched to imagine a future in which novels are not read at all. ― Gore Vidal Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television. ― Gore Vidal I don’t like the word love. It’s like patriotism, it’s like the flag, it’s the last refuge of scoundrels. When people start talking about what warm, deep emotions they have, and they are loving people, I watch out, somebody’s gonna steal something. Romantic love, as Americans conceive it, does not exist, hence the enormous divorce rate. Because, whatever it is, it is sexual, that first brings them together. When that cools is often not much left. ― Gore Vidal It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. ― Gore Vidal The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent. ― Gore Vidal The reason no one has yet been able to come up with a good word to describe the homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer, etc.) is because he does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about. ― Gore Vidal Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the higher altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for the freedom not only to conform but to consume. ― Gore Vidal At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice. ― Gore Vidal We are all prostitutes, in one sense or another, ethically if not sexually. ― Gore Vidal For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more. ― Gore Vidal And because I'm a writer, people think that I'm this poor little fragile thing. I’m not poor and fragile ... And anybody who insults me is going to get it right back. ― Gore Vidal If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshipping country like America painfully brief. ― Gore Vidal At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area. ― Gore Vidal Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little. ― Gore Vidal The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did. ― Gore Vidal But women are always attracted to power. I do not think there could ever be a conqueror so bloody that most women would not willingly lie with him in the hope of bearing a son who would be every bit as ferocious as the father. ― Gore Vidal Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself. ― Gore Vidal Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age. ― Gore Vidal There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties. ― Gore Vidal A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. ― Gore Vidal Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so. ― Gore Vidal Envy is the central fact of American life. ― Gore Vidal The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since. ― Gore Vidal Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. ― Gore Vidal Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60. ― Gore Vidal All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself. ― Gore Vidal Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. ― Gore Vidal Fifty percent of people won’t vote, and fifty percent don’t read newspapers. I hope it’s the same fifty percent. ― Gore Vidal Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences. ― Gore Vidal The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return. ― Gore Vidal Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. ― Gore Vidal The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. ― Gore Vidal The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so. ― Gore Vidal Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine. ― Gore Vidal We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic. ― Gore Vidal As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days. ― Gore Vidal Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself. ― Gore Vidal Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die. ― Gore Vidal If you are in love, that is something very intense, and very generally very brief, as has been most people’s experience. You don’t live with the person you are in love with, I should think. I’ve known very few cases of it. You mean it’s an arrangement of convenience for you? No, you live with a friend, that’s all. It is something quite different from having a grand passion or a lover. ― Gore Vidal Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them. ― Gore Vidal I’m not a conspiracy theorist – I’m a conspiracy analyst. ― Gore Vidal I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam – good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system. ― Gore Vidal Gore Vidal, Iconic American Author, Had Way More Sex Than You Gore Vidal’s Beloved Women: Susan Sarandon, Joan Collins, and Others Remember Their Friend Gore Vidal - Wikipedia “Vidal wrote the autobiographies Palimpsest: A Memoir (1995), Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 1964 to 2006 (2006), and Snapshots in History’s Glare (2009).” 10 Best Gore Vidal Books (2023) Ranked - That You Must Read! Tim Teeman, In Bed With Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood and the Private World of an American Master (2013) Scotty Bowers with Lionel Friedberg, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars (2012) Fred Kaplan, Gore Vidal: A Biography (1999) Jay Parini, Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal (2015)
