Ellen DeGeneres

<><><1><><>  "This was an important chapter of my life, and although I'm  disappointed the show was cancelled, I look forward to moving beyond the stereotype. Look for me in my new sitcom, 'Two Girls, A Horse, and Some Wine Coolers.'"

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"I think we put on a really good show. There was a segment of the 
audience that definitely ran away from the show because of the gay material, but creatively it was a better show than ever. ABC  acted like it was ashamed or uncomfortable. It's tough to get the public on board when the network is not committed. ABC could have turned around and made 'Ellen' into a cultural phenomenon, but instead, they justified people's bigotry." 

--Ellen Executive Producer Tim Doyle to Variety, April 24. 

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"Question: You wrote that Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche were as  cozy as ever. But I read elsewhere that Heche has developed an  attraction for a male actor. Who is right? ...  

"Answer: Perhaps both of us. Heche, 28, may be having second (or 
is it third?) thoughts about her sexual orientation. Our source on the set of her latest film, 'Force Majeure,' says sparks flew between Heche and her 6-foot-4 co-star, Vince Vaughn, 27. We're told she also flirted with other actors except when DeGeneres, 40, came to visit. Her agent says Anne and Vince are 'just good friends.'" 

--“Walter Scott's Personality Parade” column in Parade Magazine, 
April 19. 

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"It [being gay] seems to be not such a big deal here for whatever reason. I'm not sure why, but it's great, so I'm looking at apartments." 

--Ellen DeGeneres to London's Daily Telegraph, April 22. 

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"I didn't expect everyone to say, 'Me, too! Me, too!' [after I came out] but I did expect that someone would say, 'Yes, me too.'  It is a little disappointing when you think about the people we are all thinking about who are gay but haven't felt able to come out. I know that they are struggling with it. You know, an actor is always playing a role, so if they are gay, it doesn't mean that their career is over." 

--Ellen DeGeneres to London's Daily Telegraph, April 22. 

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"We have always been the cultural parents of an ungrateful heterosexual society. We give them the clothes they wear, the homes they live in, the music they listen to and the movies and plays they go to. And [it] comes right back in our face. We have the most ungrateful children." 

--Playwright/actor Harvey Fierstein to Denver's Out Front, March 25. 

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"If I would have been healthier, emotionally and psychologically, I probably would have only won one gold medal. ... That would have been enough. But, diving was a form of a drug as well [as] of hiding. For me it was my salvation. 

--Gay Olympic diver Greg Louganis to the gay newspaper Texas Triangle, April 2. 

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"I keep a secret little notebook that I call 'The Lost Notebook of Tom of Estonia' that I draw these kind of pornographic men in." 

--Dykes To Watch Out For cartoonist Alison Bechdel to Chicago's Windy City Times, April 9. 

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"We're in this assimilation phase. In a lot of ways, that's distressing, but there are a lot of good things about it. I'm an old-fashion existentialist queer. I liked having a ghetto and being so strongly allied with my group. That kind of group isn't there anymore. It's like what has happened to other civil rights groups. You reach a certain critical mass and you get co-opted by the mainstream culture." 

--Dykes To Watch Out For cartoonist Alison Bechdel to Atlanta's Southern Voice, April 16. 

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"I've often said that if I make it [in]to a mainstream [news]paper, somebody should take me out back and shoot me!" 

--Dykes To Watch Out For cartoonist Alison Bechdel to Atlanta's Southern Voice, April 16. 

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"People with AIDS have been using steroids therapeutically. They were fighting 'wasting syndrome.' What has happened since then, there have been a lot of abuse of steroids. Young men are saying, 'If the [HIV-] positive men are built up, what about us negative men?' They've begun using steroids on the black market. What the  
steroids are doing to their health is incredibly detrimental...We're seeing a lot of side effects of steroids. Liver damage, kidney damage. 'Roid rage' is something that's common. Skin damage. People are breaking out in acne. Shrinking of the testicles and sexual organs." 

--Gay writer Michelangelo Signorile to the Miami Herald, April 16. 

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"Monogamous gay men? They'll have about six subscribers. I'm a strong believer that there's no such thing as a monogamous man -- there's just too much testosterone." 

--Michael Colbruno, a gay man on San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown's staff, in reference to Arrow, a magazine for monogamous gay men that debuts in June, to the San Francisco Chronicle, April 18.  

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"Growing up gay and Jewish in a small Southern town made my condition as an outsider very clear. Like most gay people, I encountered a lot of homophobia. Like most Jewish people in this culture, I come from a tradition of proud declaration of my identity. Being Jewish taught me how to be gay and being gay taught me to be Jewish." 

--Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner to Minneapolis' Star- Tribune, April 15. 
 

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"It is with great disappointment that I see that, once again, our colleagues in Washington have chosen to play politics with human lives. It is somewhat gratifying that, after many months of study, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, has made a positive determination and has validated the science which demonstrated, many years ago, that needle exchange programs reduce HIV infections and do not increase drug use. A scientific determination is an empty gesture, however, that can be made meaningful only when this administration puts its money where its mouth is and allows the federal funding of needle exchange programs at the community level." 

--Elizabeth Taylor in an April 21 press release. 

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"Oscar Wilde was ... a terrible hypocrite, who had the most sordid life imaginable, consorting with young men who had been procured for him and who he met in rooms where the curtains were never drawn back." 

--Gay writer/performer Quentin Crisp, 89, to San Diego's Gay & 
Lesbian Times, April 16. 

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"No one has yet addressed the really burning question in the whole George Michael affair: will Elton sing at his trial? I thought a sensitive reworking of one of his old classics might result in a dignified chorus of 'I guess that's why they call them the loos'." 

--Columnist Graham Norton in London's The Pink Paper, April 17. 
"Loo" is British slang for "toilet." 

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"The best way to meet a woman is to stop looking for one. Just as long as you don't stop going to places where a woman who also 
isn't looking can find you." 

--From Shelly Roberts' upcoming book Roberts' Rules of Lesbian 
Dating. 
 

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"She will tell you in the first three weeks exactly what will go wrong. Listen very carefully." 

--From Shelly Roberts' upcoming book Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Dating. 

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"If we want to be like everyone else, we will act like everyone else. We will be greedy, we will value style over substance, and we will cast out those that challenge us and our comfortable assumptions. ... I challenge each of you to break through your world to a new place, to challenge your assumptions, to develop new relationships, to act as though the world that you create for  yourself and your community is the model that each of us should live by. I challenge you to tear down your walls, to tear down your stereotypes, and to lead." 

--NGLTF Executive Director Kerry Lobel, in an April 14 syndicated column. 

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"Every time I swallow those pills [HIV antivirals] it's a pain in the ass. You have to remember to take them with you. I keep them in little baggies. But I love those pills. I respect them and am so grateful. My friend Marty isn't here to have the miracle that happened to me. I talk about it especially for people who aren't  in large cities. I'm not sure a kid in Des Moines, Iowa, knows  that it is possible to manage this disease. That's why I do interviews and why I want to spread the word." 

--Composer Jerry Herman to Miami's The Weekly News, April 22. 

Rex Wockner's "Quote Unquote" is archived from mid-1994 onward at http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/world/wockner.html