"I’m obsessed with manhood as a brutal and artful performance. My mind always finds its way back to the crossroad where sex, race, and power collide. Journeys, transformation, as well as dashed attempts to transform, fascinate me as well."

"If you look at the poems in Prelude, you can identify the later material by identifying the poems with more white space and unexpected line breaks. Grief did that to me and my writing. It exploded my expectations and introduced these blank pockets of deep feeling. My prose writing became more fluid and lyrical…"

"Something you see in the book is my tendency to self-bully. It started when I was a gay black kid growing up in the suburbs. I wasn’t bullied by individuals; kids weren’t shoving me into lockers or calling me slurs to my face. Shame—electrified by racism and homophobia—was enforced by the broader culture though, and in response, I started bullying myself. I started saying cruel things about myself to myself. While I’ve generally grown out of self-hate, an ease with being tough and candid about myself to myself is an integral aspect of my writing…"

"Being gay isn't a choice, just like being black isn't a choice…I don't stop. I do not give up. I do not take America's 'no' to my identity for an answer."

"I’ve always been at the peripheries of the Chicano Movement because the Chicano world does not consider me Chicana enough. They, however, respect me as a writer…"

"When I was a child, poverty was a common suffering for everybody around me. A common suffering is a richness in itself."

"I was not really of the barrio, but the barrio was an important part of my life. Spanish was my first language; English was the language of my reading world. This was the world I lived in—an idealistic world, and unreal world that filled my senses with hopes, with joy and identification…"

"Deep in my psyche, I am no different than any American—I have a greater command of their language than they do. I am a composite of all of the heroines in the books I’ve read—legendary, mythological, fictional ones. I wonder if I am real? I want to be!"

"I do more non-fiction writing. I have two memoirs, another nonfiction book, and I do lots of essays, journalism, poetry, and reporting. But I love the fiction. As you know I have a novel, a short story collection, and two children’s books. It’s more challenging to write fiction, but I’d like to do more of these. I don’t really prefer one over the other."

"…The root cause of poverty and crime is capitalism itself. We need a society based on cooperation, caring and creativity – not profits, war and social control. For troubled men and women, we need to give people a “chance to live,” as Clarence Darrow once said. To start, we need a government that works for us – not the 1%."

"Gangs have always existed—they are primarily a community a young men trying to find intensity, meaning, a path to the outer world (outside of home) that most tribal groupings addressed with rituals, rites of passage, initiation ceremonies. We’ve lost this knowledge as a culture. Gangs also exist when there are lots of empties in a person, in family, in community. It points out how we need to do more to bring real art, passions, teachings, caring, and resources into the emptiness of young peoples’ lives…"

"You're right, you're always right, yes, yes, of course. Love will survive. They couldn't kill it with purple hair-do's, they can't kill it with a plague. Boys will fall in love with each other's earlobes if all else should fail. Because it never really was about sex, was it? It was about love."

"If you have to do something, write me a funny AIDS play. Sure you can. It's the biggest joke played on us since sex itself - and with the longest punch line."

"Reverend Lawson: You men are homosexual! Bob (correcting the Reverend): Homosexuals."

"For people like us it is necessary to be a bit stronger, more self-critical, more observant than the usual run. Whether we happen to come already enhanced with these qualities, as some have claimed, or whether our situation invests them in us, we have traditionally - and we do have a long and proud tradition - been a little finer, a little firmer, more sensitive and flexible than others... There will be times when only your own spine can support you, moments when only your own wit can inspire you, days when nothing but exacting self-control can raise you from bed, nights when nothing but your word can impel you into society. But of all these disciplines, there is nothing you must hold to more sternly than to be kind and sympathetic. The easiest armor to put on is always cruelty. That armor will, indeed, see you through everything. Vicious condescension toward those without your strength can make you feel momentarily superior. But that easy armor must be forgone. Don't ever curdle that creamy brow with lines of easy disdain, or curl those lips with a popular sneer. Of all the models available, the one of gentleman in our late war is most succinct: Face what you have to face with humor, dignity, and style; protect yourself with knightly grace; have contempt for your own weakness and never encourage it in others; but never, Ralph, never for an instant permit yourself to feel anything other than pity and deepest sympathy for unfortunate comrades who have, after all, fallen in the same battle."

"Reverend Lawson:This entire book is nothing but young men doing homosexual things together. Bill: Well, what else could they do together?"

"Reverend Lawson:You lured those boys in here and made filth of them! Bob: We don't think human bodies is filth until they're corpses, Reverend Lawson! Bill: We loved every inch of those boys. Bob: Every chance we got. Bill: And we sent them away to war, since they had to go, with every surface of them— Bob: Tinglin' with kisses an' love."

"Bob: People came here for religious freedom, and we worshipped those boys."

"Don't bother answering back. Anything said to me at this point might as well be written on a decomposing squash. The brain goes first, you know -- except the portions dedicated to pain, which are apparently immune."

"I want to give [my records] all away before some fool plays disco at my funeral, and then the record gets stuck, and nobody can tell, and the service goes on forever!"

"God, think of the great men that have nibbled on me, and now I'm nothing but a snack for a virus - something that can't even decide if it's a plant or an animal."

"I tried to make up by offering to be a subject for any cute tricks that science might want to try. And [the doctor] said, "Mr. Wood, we cannot use you as an experimental animal," and I tod him, "Doc, I’m an effeminate queer, I’ve never been used as anything else!""

"When I was just a little girl in East Bay, California, I noticed that East Bay was pig Latin for “beast.” But I knew I had found my niche when I realized that Alice Faye was pig Latin for "phallus.""

"It's my party and I'll die if I want to!"

"Must one go through the five official stages? What are those five stages again: "anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance." Well, back up: here comes my acceptance speech. "I am now, and I have always been a flaming faggot, responsible for style in its every manifestation. I have my own five steps: flippancy, sentimentality, sarcasm, camp, and smut. They've got me through life, and deity dammit, they'll get me through death!""