Larry Kramer Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Being gay is a natural normal beautiful variation on being human. Period. End of subject. Therefore, any argument which says differently is an immoral supremacist one. Call it out as such. ... Be outraged, offended, angry and intolerant of any discussion or any one who describes you as unequal, undeserving or unnatural for being just as you are.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“By nature, Im an optimistic person. No one believes it, but I am.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there--all throughhistory we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organise ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I don't mind about the dead ones. They're dead. The worst of it is, they cling to the living and won't let go.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“The point about L-O-V-E is that we hate the word. Because we vulgarize it. It should be taboo, forbidden from utterance for many years, till we've found a new and a better idea.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I've spent fifteen years of my life fighting for our right to be free and make love whenever, wherever... And you're telling me that all those years of what being gay stood for is wrong... and I'm a murderer. We have been so oppressed! Don't you remember how it was? Can't you see how important it is for us to love openly, without hiding and without guilt?”
-- Larry Kramer -
“Writers are given one great story to tell their story. I’m telling my story as a political document.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“This is always history's greatest failure, its inability to believe what it sees, what, almost always, someone sees.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“Gay life in 1970 was very bleak, compartmentalized. You didn't take it to work. You had to really lead a double life. There were bars, but you sort of snuck in and snuck out. Activism and gay pride simply didn't exist. I don't even think the word 'gay' was in existence.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were gay, just for starters. They didn't have a name for it, but their primary affections and intellectual attractions were all for other men.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I came from Yale, where you get an extracurricular degree in self-importance because you went there. When AIDS happened, I was treated like an outcast. And I don't like that feeling.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I do not think the gay population has been all that rabid for gay marriage. Note that I do not use the words 'gay community.' Expunge that expression from your vocabulary. We are not a community.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I forgot that San Francisco is not an angry city like New York. Gays have gotten what they wanted there over the years, unlike New York, where we had to fight for everything.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“AIDS is a plague - numerically, statistically and by any definition known to modern public health - though no one in authority has the guts to call it one.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“Activism is very seductive, and writing is painful and hard. It's very scary to have a death threat living over your head. Activism is very sustaining. But I don't view myself as a political person. I'm just someone who desperately wants to stay alive.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“Saying someone is gay who is gay no longer constitutes defamation or slander or libel. You cannot defame someone by telling the truth.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“It’s so wonderful being a gay person. I said that before. I’m going to say it again. I love being gay. And I love gay people. I think we’re better than other people. I really do. I think we’re smarter and more talented and more aware and I do, I do, I totally do. And I think we’re more tuned in to what’s happening, tuned into the moment, tuned into our emotions, and other people’s emotions, and we’re better friends. I really do think all of these things. And I try not to forget them.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“We have to think bigger as writers. We have to try and change the world.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we're better than other people. I really do. I think we're smarter and more talented and more aware. I do, I totally do. I really do think all of these things. And I try very hard to remember all this.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“We're all going to go crazy, living this epidemic [AIDS] every minute, while the rest of the world goes on out there, all around us, as if nothing is happening, going on with their own lives and not knowing what it's like, what we're going through. We're living through war, but where they're living it's peacetime, and we're all in the same country.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I think being gay and gay people are the most wonderful things in the world. I wish all of us could have the power and pride to benefit from what is rightfully ours. Why isn't there an enormous building in Washington called the 'National Association of Lesbian and Gay Concerns' to lobby for us?”
-- Larry Kramer -
“AIDS was allowed to happen. It is a plague that need not have happened. It is a plague that could have been contained from the very beginning.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I don't consider myself an artist. I consider myself a very opinionated man who uses words as fighting tools.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“I now realize that I am a gay man before anything else. Other gays may think they're a Jew first, or black, or a banker, but I'm gay.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“You do not get more with honey than with vinegar.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“The guys in New York don’t know the new media. San Francisco takes more risks as a culture.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“Too many people hate the people that AIDS most affects: gay people and people of color. I do not mean dislike, or feel uncomfortable with. I mean hate. Downright hate. Down and dirty hate.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“There's no question that the gay movement would not be as far along as it is without AIDS. But how can there be any other issue in the face of death, possible extinction?”
-- Larry Kramer -
“The most important fact is that gays have been here since day one. To say otherwise is a gross denial and stupidity. We played an enormous part in the history of America.”
-- Larry Kramer -
“The media in America is not covering American AIDS very much. They're covering African AIDS as if somehow miraculously it's all stopped here. Well, it hasn't, and the one thing they're not saying about Africa is that all those people are going to die; there's no way these people can be saved - none.”
-- Larry Kramer
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