Quotes from David Wojnarowicz

History is made and preserved by and for particular classes of people. A camera in some hands can preserve an alternate history.

Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom.

I lean back and tilt my head so all I see are the clouds in the sky. I'm looking back inside my head with my eyes wide open. I still don't know where I'm going; I decided I'm not crazy or alien. It's just that I'm more like one of those kids they find in remote jungles or forests []. A wolf child. And they've dragged me into this fucking schizo-culture, snarling and spitting and walking around on curled knuckles.

Sometimes I come to hate people because they can't see where I am. I've gone empty, completely empty and all they see is the visual form: my arms and legs, my face, my height and posture, the sounds that come from my throat. But I'm fucking empty. The person I was just one year ago no longer exists, drifts spinning slowly into the ether somewhere way back there.

Darkness has completely descended onto the landscape and I stood up and stretched my arms above my head and I wondered what it would be like if it were a perfect world. Only god knows. And he is dead.

It is exhausting living in a population where people don't speak up if what they witness doesn't directly threaten them.

Hell is a place on earth. Heaven is a place in your head.

It's just a real gentle moment. I'm here by myself and I don't mind. I kind of wish it could just stay like this for maybe a few years, or I just never moved out of this spot. I could just watch the light stay like this. And maybe somebody coming along and just putting their arms around me for a few minutes.

To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific repercussions in the pre-invented world.

I wanted to be physically erased and start over again. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be there. I guess I wanted to be nowhere, I wanted to listen to my brain talk inside of nothingness. I wanted to be untouchable and have no need.

When they invented the car they invented the collision and the darkness of what time leads the willing body to do.

I'm looking for a path out of the emptiness but all I see is the great wide earth in various formations.

I'll never shake the hand of someone I might be fighting against in wartime.

If silence equals death, he taught us, then art equals language equals life.

To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific repercussions in the pre-invented world. The government has the job of maintaining the day to day illusion of the one tribe nation. Each public disclosure of a public reality becomes something of a magnet that can attract others with a similar frame of reference. Thus, each public disclosure of a fragment of private reality serves as a dismantling tool against the illusion of a one tribe nation.

I'm getting closer to the coast and realize how much I hate arriving at a destination. Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom.

What I feel is the momentary shock of realizing that most of the wood, metal and plastic fixtures, the sinks, lampshades, the shower stall, and even the drinking cups will all outlive me if my body follows the same progression that this tiny invisible-to-the-eye virus has initiated.

I found him very sexy because I love difference. An unbearably handsome face bores me unless something beneath it surface is crooked or askew: even a broken nose or one eye slightly higher than the other, or something psychological, something unfamiliar and maybe even suspect.

Sometimes I come to hate people because they can't see where I am. I've gone empty, completely empty and all they see is the visual form; my arms and legs, my face, my height and posture, the sounds that come from my throat.

I remembered a friend of mine dying from AIDS, and while he was visiting his family on the coast for the last time, he was seated in the grass during a picnic to which dozens of family members were invited. He looked up from his fried chicken and said, "I just want to die with a big dick in my mouth.

My eyes have always been advertisements for an early death.

If silence equals death, then art equals language equals life." —David Wojnarowicz

I've been in rage all my life at this thing we call 'society'

some of us live in big cities so we can be alone, so we can avoid ourselves, and yet by living within massive populations we can have help or love within reach if necessary.