Quotes from Marsha P. Johnson

I started out with makeup in 1963, 1964. And in 1965, I was coming out more, and I was still wearing makeup, but I was still going to jail just for wearing makeup.

I got lost in the music in 1963 at Stonewall... No! No, it was Stonewall - it was 1967 that I got lost. In 19 - oh my dear, Stonewall, I got lost at Stonewall. Heard it through the grapevine. 1969! I got lost in the music and I couldn't get out.

In 1969, I started wearing female attire full-time.

A drag queen is one that usually goes to a ball and that's the only time she gets dressed up. Transvestites live in drag. A transsexual spends most of her life in drag.

They call me a legend in my own time, because there were so many queens gone that I'm one of the few queens left from the '70s and the '80s.

Darling, I want my gay rights now.

I don't know what I am if I'm not a woman.

A lot of times I've reached my hand out to people in the gay community that just didn't have nobody to help them when they were down and out.

As long as gay people don't have their rights all across America, there's no reason for celebration.

I may be crazy, but that don't make me wrong.

How many years has it taken people to realize that we are all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race? I mean how many years does it take people to see that? We're all in this rat race together!

Gay sisters don't think too bad of transvestites. Gay brothers do.

I'd been going to jail for like, 10 years before the Stonewall.

I'll always be known reaching out to young people who have no one to help them out, so I help them out with a place to stay or some food to eat or some change for their pocket.

I got robbed once. A man pulled a gun on me and snatched my pocketbook in a car. I don't trust men that much any more.

I think if transvestites don't stand up for themselves, nobody else is going to stand up for transvestites.

STAR is a very revolutionary group. We believe in picking up the gun, starting a revolution if necessary. Our main goal is to see gay people liberated and free and have equal rights that other people have in America.

Now they got two little nice statues in Chariot Park to remember the gay movement. How many people have died for these two little statues to be put in the park for them to recognize gay people?

There are a lot of gay transvestites who have been in jail for no reason at all.

You never completely have your rights, one person, until you all have your rights.

I was no one, nobody from Nowheresville, until I became a drag queen.

I'm still stuck in the Stonewall in 1968. I never left the Stonewall.

I know people think I'm a stupid little street queen out there begging for change cause there's nothing else she knows how to do.

History isn't something you look back at and say it was inevitable, it happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.