Lgbt People

"[I]n the theatre, life is happening now. That's Falstaff's first word: "Now!" It's not reported life, it's life right there."

"Any actor who has had his marriage photographed by the press has proclaimed his heterosexuality. Now, apart from one member of the House of Commons [Chris Smith], there are no gay members of the House of Commons? There are no gay members of the House of Lords? This is the times we are living in. That homosexuality is an invisible minority. Of course it's a minority. I would claim that it is between 5-10% of the population. Not converted to it, born with it, happy with it, would like to live with it, inoffensively and contributing to society. You [Peregrine Worsthorne] suspect they might be corrupting society."

"This year has been an insane about of exploration, just getting deep down into my own heart; things I've been through, things I've not really talked to myself about. Because I feel like a lot of us kind of float through life, and we get to this point of numbness and we don't really know how we got there, we're not really feeling as much. And that's to say to the good things as much as the bad things. And I noticed that when I lost touch of feeling, I lost my artistry, I lost myself and what I love to do because I couldn't get in touch with that anymore. Because feelings is what fuels it, emotion is what fuels the art. I've been just reconnecting with that, and allowing myself to feel and allowing myself to explore the different ranges in my mind."

"I think the numbness is kind of created as a coping mechanism to all of the bombardment that we get in the world we live in right now. We're just constantly asked to be performative, and constantly asked to be present, and happy, and nice, and giving, especially as a woman, so it's just kind of exhausting after a certain point, especially when you're in a monotonous kind of cycle where you don't feel heard, you don't feel like you're expressing yourself, or you don't feel like you have any value to the situation you're in; it's easy to succumb to the numbness."

"I’d rather be myself authentically than have to keep up with a persona."

"This first video [for "Expectations"] is an exploration of my two extremes: my really naïve, innocent, youthful self, who is very hopeful and blissful in the world, and really believes that everybody has a good heart, and really believes that we can overcome this darkness that we are all surrounded by on a regular basis. And then there's my darker part of myself, who is more violent in her thoughts about the way things should be handled, or more aggressive and demanding and sensual and explorative of self."

"Never let anyone's opinion or perception of you convince you that you're someone you're not. Keep your head up."

"I feel the world is the way it is because we don’t talk about ourselves ever. We don’t talk about how we feel, we don’t talk about how we experience things. And not knowing yourself is when you project your insecurities and your fears and your bullshit onto other people. And so that just kind of creates a whole collective where nobody’s aware of themselves, and if you don’t have self-awareness then how can we have collective awareness?"

"Art is a self-care medium for me"

"Put some more hours in the day, God"

"I feel like style is just a constant evolution because it’s an expression of self. Some days I’ll be in like a grungy mood and just don’t wanna fuck with anybody, and some days I’m just like 'hi world I love you'"

"Pride to me is a celebration of self. It is a celebration of being fully aware of and proud of your existence. And it's also historically a major monumental moment for the queer community. It was started by a black trans woman. And the movement is still around because we are still looking to feel empowered and still looking for visibility for all of our members."

"I rekindled a ­friendship I hadn't had in a long time and I was reminded of all the parts of me that had left. I was like, 'Wow, I love to paint and to write, and to be outside...'"

"Soviet communism and Western capitalism share the same crazy ideology: forced industrialization of society."

"I am Christian, therefore I am communist. The first Christian communities were very communist... except that they were expecting the immediate end of the world."

"I propose hermeneutic communism: non-dogmatic communism, weak communism. Only this can save us. [Is is] without essences, without absolutes to be realized at all costs. It is only an ideal of equitable society, a society that progressively weakens violence like dialectics."

"Those who rail against relativism are not addressing us as individuals, who are not and can never be relativists—since perhaps only God can truly be so, looking down from above on the plurality of cultures and interpretations. Relativism can only be a feature of society, since it is within society that multiple worldviews coexist and often clash. Would eliminating the vice of relativism not simply mean doing away with liberal society?"

"Just as Western literature would be unthinkable without the Homeric poems, without Shakespeare, without Dante, so our culture as a whole would be meaningless if we were to cut Christianity out of it."

"Eco is one of the few people I recognize as being more intelligent than me. They don't give him the Nobel Prize only because they already gave it to Dario Fo. But he's sly, he identifies too readily with his social persona as a sacred monster, a national monument. And I get pissed off with him when I see him hanging out with the people from “Libertà e Giustizia” (Freedom and Justice), which is a kind of Red Cross committee. These are balanced gentlemen who are unlikely to be seen in their smocks in Piazza San Giovanni shouting at Berlusconi."

"Someone said that it is important — you cannot live without it — exactly because it is useless. As Heidegger put it in a famous sentence: "Science doesn't think" — precisely because it is useful, it works toward goals that it doesn’t choose. In Kantian terms, science deals with phenomena, factual data that it receives according to reason’s frames, organizes them in time and space, expresses them mathematically, connects and measures them in various ways. But Kant says that there is the noumenon beyond the phenomenon: what you can think but is phenomenologically unknown. It is part of what Kant calls the "Kingdom of Ends". In this kingdom you encounter freedom; that is something impossible to know phenomenologically. The same goes for the existence of God. In philosophy, there are higher questions that usually don’t have an answer because they do not concern phenomenal data, the way science does. This is the source of a peculiar feeling of uselessness and void-ness about philosophy. But we cannot live without it if we don’t want to become machines or robots."

"Stalin imposed the development of heavy industry against agriculture and thence the displacement of people, the sacrifices, the deaths... A crazy dream! But... without the Stalinist industrial force, the Nazis would have won!"

"The tradition of the Catholic Church is based on keeping the faithful under terrorist threats. The story of Eluana Englaro shows that the Catholic Church as an institution cannot be reformed; it deserves only to be destroyed. We are witnessing the final madness"

"The paradoxical fact is that it is precisely the passion for truth, conscience, in its search for the truth, that has come to undermine itself: it has discovered, in fact, that it is just a passion like any other."

"Well, if I hadn't been gay, I would never have embarked on this profound reflection on the non-normativity of natural essences, which constitutes the soul of weak thought. So, even if it's not a particularly gay philosophy, I believe there are important connections."

"My mother was a widow and I am gay, but I know many other children of widowed mothers who, despite the absence of their fathers, did not become gay. After all, I am convinced that almost anything is better for a child than an orphanage. Nor can one pursue the perfect family balance. It is enough that the adoptive parents are normal, civilized people, not sadists who cut up children, and that they have an income to support them, without necessarily having to be part of the Agnelli family."

"Thank to God I am uncertain, or even an atheist – not an idolater, not truth-dependent... And then, an existence full of certainty, how boring. A bit like the traditional Paradise: tota simul ac perfecta possessio. But please. Instead, what? Open historicity, which is the true meaning of creationism. We are not manifestations of a geometrically demonstrated structure; the rationality we encounter in the world is only a “fact”, a contingent, historical product, which, as such – with our experience of choices, alternatives projects with successes and failures – of ex-sistence, that is – attests to the contingent, free nature of my origin. I call God the act of original freedom from which my freedom comes, and which I certainly cannot prove with the five Thomistic ways or with any other deductive method. Even Descartes does not prove it. And Immanuel Kant can only imagine eternal life as a continuation of the struggle for good, that is, as history."

"Opposing homosexual families is only possible in the name of a philosophical belief about the natural essence of the family itself. This cannot be professed by a lay state."

"I am a marxist, a leninist and I don't even consider disagreeable Stalin, who saved us from Hitler, more than the United States."

"I grew up as a Catholic militant; when I was a boy I used to read authors like Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and novelists like Bernanos. But Catholic inspiration led me also to read authors that were heretical to the modern tradition. I didn’t like rationalistic historicism that came from Enlightenment, peaking in Hegel and Marx."

"Even if we have to think that the Higgs boson has nothing to do with God, it is nevertheless true that discoveries such as today's have a powerful impact on our lives, on our worldview, and therefore also on our religiosity. It is a kind of effect that we can only call “neutralizing” with respect to our lived history. How can we compare the few millennia of human history with the endless horizons of geological eras, the formation of the physical cosmos, and, indeed, the minutes following the Big Bang?"

"Cecchi Paone is a kind of right-wing aunt. I don't dislike him. I don't like him, but not because he's right-wing. If Robert Redford were right-wing, I'd still like him. Cecchi Paone, honestly... I don't even like Rizzo . But when Rizzo's name comes up in gay clubs, everyone."

"I still love her. Can’t let her go! She could shoot me, and if I survived it. I woulda had open arms, still, with lots of love to give. That’s Just the way I am. I Love to give Love. I know I’ve hurt, myself over being this away. But the pain, doesn’t feel, so bad, when you know your struggling to give love, for a cause that really pays off. I know for a fact. Ty and I would've stayed together for life. If this Shit hadda never of happened. She told me on the phone, in one of the recorded phone calls at VCBJ. Lord did I cry on that phone. Cut me up like a machete attack to the heart. Arlene, wants to keep her away from my funeral. I want Tyria at my funeral more then Anything."

"With Tyria I was going to begin. But she always spent my bread that I’d make. and I never had a chance to. So the next day I’d go out and make more. It was so easy to. And big bucks. All the bars, fancy night clubs, and restaurants we’d hit. As well as her buying clothes for herself. I had one beat up bra, a few pair of underwear—recked tennis shoes. 3 pairs of pants and 5 T-shirts to my name. She had gobs of clothes. I couldn't help it. I was insanely in love with her. And just wanted her to have it all. I was her puppet."

"Let me tell you what can happen in a rape. Your hair gets pulled out, he shoves his penis fully erected down your throat and bruises your esophagus, as well as the roof and sides of the (inside cheeks) of your mouth... Also telling you, if you scratch my cock with your teeth, your dead. Then he pulls your pussy hairs out, for additional pain, grabs your ass real hard like (kneading dough) as he’s cramming his cock in you, same thing in anal screwing. Bites nipples, to also, nearly cutting em off as he’s screwing you viciously, pounding as fast and as hard as he can... And also while all this is going on, threats are being made, and dirty talk at the most provocativeness profanity you could imagine. So rape is not just get on and get off.! Stupid fuckers. Society apparently doesn't understand this, nor cares to, especially if you’re a hooker. There allowed to treat you like this, and also kill you..."

"I'm not a man-hater. (I am) so used to being treated like dirt that I guess it's become a way of life. I'm a decent person."

"I think performing Oscar the first time in Santa Fe is really what prompted me to look into proposing to my husband Scott, because it just seemed right. You know, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a huge advocate for Oscar and talked about in interviews. She came to the performances in Santa Fe and we were able to meet her and take photos with her. So it all just made sense: I think Prop 8 failed at that time, states started to make marriage legal, and it just all seemed right. So, yeah, we got married between the two runs of Oscar, and fortunately, Justice Ginsburg married us in D.C., which was such an honor. I still look back to that day and can’t really believe it! I asked her, and she said if I could come to Washington, D.C., she would be happy to do it. And on June 21st, 2014, we got married."

"I meet amateur composers all the time who have music flooding through their heads, apparently, but they have no technical ability at all. They don’t actually have the faintest idea how to put it down on the page. These days you can actually get away with that, because you sort of mess around and track it, and all those things. But to my mind, that balance between the excitement of what is called inspiration or just simply a good idea, and the technical routine that goes into writing music down at all, is what makes a composer. You can’t have one without the other and be a complete composer. I can’t imagine how you could."

"Good music really adds something creative to the film, something which wasn’t there before, an element which wasn’t in the film before. You can be working with very distinguished directors and actors and designers and so on. I take film music very seriously, and every time I do a film, I insulate myself by saying, “This is good, and I’m going to do a good job.” If I went through the film music I do, the commercial work I do, thinking this is just awful and it’s to pay the bills, I would be ashamed of myself. I never have done that. I try and add something really good to each film I do, really the best I can do for that film, but it ain’t writing novels. It’s not a symphony; it’s applied music."

"Mr. Smollett is still saying that he is innocent. Still running down the Chicago Police Department. How dare him, This sends an unambiguous message that there is no accountability and that is wrong."

"It's Mr. Smollett who committed this hoax, period. If he wanted to clear his name, the way to do that was in a court of law so that everyone could see the evidence"

"Is there no decency to this man?"

"I hope he wins ... I'm happy for him that the system worked for him in his favor because the system isn't always fair, especially for people of color. So I'm glad it worked out for him. It's not my place or any other person's place to judge him or what not, but I'm glad the he's nominated I hope he wins because I'd be interested to hear his speech"

"As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with. He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying. One of these purported suspects was Jussie’s personal trainer who he hired to ready him physically for a music video. It is impossible to believe that this person could have played a role in the crime against Jussie or would falsely claim Jussie’s complicity."

"Smollett was convicted of a DUI and lie to police in 2007 according to court documents."

"That story is so crazy, Now it's coming out that he might have set it up or whatever so I wish I knew what the truth was because everybody's so quick to jump on one side or the other before the actual facts come out."

"He did tell police that from what he saw, he thought it was white or pale skin, that’s what he initially said, Obviously, you can disguise that. You can put makeup on."

"This is a truly awful hate crime that has no place anywhere in this nation. No one should be attacked because of the color of their skin or who they love. Jussie, please know that many people across IL and our country are sending love your way."

"The racist, homophobic attack on @JussieSmollett is an affront to our humanity, No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love. I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all."

"Police raided the home of two persons of interest in Jussie Smollett case last night. Both men are of Nigerian decent and have appeared as extras on the show. Police took bleach, shoes electronics and more.Officers asked family if they knew #Jussiesmollett. This information is according to family who says home was ransacked. I asked family why they think police picked the two brothers up for questioning and they replied by saying the men left for #Nigeria the day of the attack."

"The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I'm glad he's safe. To those in Congress who don't feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime– I urge you to pay attention."