A Quote by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

I've heard of many people who claim they'd as soon their children were dead as gay. What it took me a long time to believe is that these people are saying no more than the truth. They even speak for others too delicate to use the cruel words.
I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why.
He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.
Because I took an oath to help people. To protect them from The League and any corrupt government. (Devyn) Yeah, and I know people better than to believe that for even an instant. Altruism is dead. People use and they take until you’re nothing but a bleeding corpse on the ground at their feet. (Alix)
I've heard all the things - 'their marriage is not real,' 'he's gay,' 'she's gay,' 'they swing'. But at the end of the day, people have to believe what they have to believe. ... But I'll tell you what, it's too hard to be in a pretend marriage. Life's too short for that one.
I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. “Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.
Because gay people were so much more visible, violence against gays was more common and reported on. But they were definitely related to each other. In the wake of AIDS, gay people felt like they had to organize, become much more active and visible. AIDS fostered a gay rights movement that made gay people more powerful and more vulnerable at the same time.
Sinners in their natural state lie dead, lifeless, and moveless; they can no more believe in Christ, nor repent, than a dead man can speak or walk: but, in virtue of the promise, the Spirit of life from Christ Jesus, at the time appointed, enters into the dead soul, and quickens it; so that it is no more morally dead, but alive, having new spiritual powers put into it, that were lost by Adam's fall.
Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?
And there were other rocks that were like animals, creeping, horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others were like words I could not say, and others like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked song they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the rocks and they didn’t frighten me any more
So many gay men are mothers to so many young people, me included. I've had gay men who were more mother to me than my own mother ever was.
I wish that people would take the time to show people that they are important in their lives, either at work, or at home. Too many times people take others for granted, and I think that needs to change. People are so much nicer and willing to help you if you use those two little words that mean so much . . . 'Thank You!'
People talk about fantastic memories of childhood, but I remember children being cruel to me and wanting to come out of childhood as soon as possible because I knew adults were generally more contained in their cruelty.
There's just too many people being bullied, too many people's lives being wrecked. This is something that is long overdue. We all have gay and lesbian people in our families, and these are good people.
I'm not saying that all women are blameless - all women are not. There are women with despicable characters who are cruel and terrible and some of them are mothers. But why do we blame our mothers more than our fathers? We let our fathers get away scot-free. We hardly even knew who they were in many cases, given the way this culture raises kids, and they may have been quite cruel. They may even have raped us as children, but even if they raped us, we will blame our mothers for not protecting us instead of blaming our fathers who actually did it.
If people depend on me to be a man of truth, I have to prove again and again and again and again that I am a man of truth. It cannot be that on Monday I am a man of truth, on Tuesday I speak three-quarters truth, Wednesday I speak half-truth, on Thursday I speak one-quarter truth, on Friday I don't speak at all, and on Saturday I can't even think how to speak the truth.
I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation.
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