Quotes from Lance Loud

As anyone who is gay will confirm, being that way is not something you become, it is a set of emotional and physical responses that just are.

In 1970, television ate my family. The Andy Warhol prophecy of 15 minutes of fame for any and everyone blew up on our doorstep.

I had been found in a mud puddle at 4:30 in the morning.

Coming out is a means of redefining oneself, of claiming membership in a lifestyle and a social order with distinct values. Chief among these values is honesty.

When you've grown sick of reading and bug-eyed from watching TV, when your friends are all visited out, no words can adequately praise the link to the outside world provided by your parents and family.

Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.

It was a pleasure to be a gay eyesore.

As I was coming out of the closet, our car was hurtling over an embankment.

Sexuality is a private matter; some believe that broadcasting it destroys the very things that make it sacred.

I wore a woman's antique fur jacket to my high school junior prom.

My gayness became quietly accepted and, shock of all shocks, life went on.

Coming out involves varying degrees of difficulty that are affected by class, race, religion, and geography.

The bulk of my learning - if I may call it such - has come within the past three months, after I became a part of the fragile body of patients who make up an AIDS hospice. Here, surrounded by teams of supportive nurses, attentive doctors, and interns, one gently comes upon his own strengths and shortcomings.

My reasons for declaring a sexual preference had to do less with the pursuit of personal freedom than with the lust for pure shock value.

Perhaps there is no agony worse than the tedium I experienced waiting for Something to Happen.

I believed I was invincible.

I have a lot in common with Lewis Carroll's Alice (my favorite female literary heroine, besides Becky Sharp). I've been sent on a journey to places even bleach can't reach.

I don't know if hep C is called 'the quiet killer,' but it easily could be, so unnoticeably does it nestle into your body before crankin' up the screws and letting you race to figure out what's going on.

I am now faced with mortality. Definitely not the most generous move.

Gay culture is surviving and thriving. Some activists believe the recent rise in homophobic violence might be a gauge of the success of positive gay images.

As I was coming out of the closet, our car was hurtling over an embankment.

Coming out involves varying degrees of difficulty that are affected by class, race, religion, and geography.

I had been found in a mud puddle at 4:30 in the morning.

If there is a gay uniform, the differences are in how each man coordinates the details: the brand and cut of the jeans, the design of belts and boots, the haircut, the number and size of earrings.