Samuel R. Delany Quotes

The moment that I realized my name was going to be said in the same sentence as children and sex, that's really intense. That's something I knew from that very moment, whatever happens past that point, something's out there in the air that is really bad.

I guess I had a suspicion of it my entire life without knowing exactly what it was - knowing that there was something different about me, which I attributed to being an artist. At 11 or 12 I started sort of clarifying for myself. It took a while.

Contrary to most state laws, the Catholic Church considered the age of consent to be as young as 12.

All my friends were doing just dumb stuff that kids do, like making out with people at parties and starting to date... I didn't know any gay people growing up or any queer people growing up, and so I just really felt alone and kind of lost, and I just wasn't experiencing life.

You don't walk like other boys. You don't talk like other boys. But at six, you are not thinking about your sexuality.

I came out at 17.

I didn't quite fit in in any particular, specific way. I was a gay teenager who was into drama.

I was a very anxious kid. I was bullied at primary school and responded by making myself as anonymous as possible at secondary school.

I spent too many years of my life stressing over and struggling with my sexuality. But it was a valuable lesson. I realised that by not sharing how you feel, you become inhibited in every facet of life.

'If Our Love Is Wrong' is, quite simply, my coming out song, as I was trying to wrap my head around my sexuality and was starting to learn about songwriting, and that my honesty and my authenticity came from my personal experiences and writing about stuff that genuinely bugged me or upset me.

The time has come, I think, when we must recognize bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior... we shall not really succeed in discarding the straitjacket of our cultural beliefs about sexual choice if we fail to come to terms with the well-documented, normal human capacity to love members of both sexes.

In some ways, I never outgrew my adolescence. I wake up in the morning and think, 'Oh my God, I'm late for a math test!' But then I say, 'Wait a minute. I'm 40.

I was confused as a kid. I was confused about my sexual identity.

I think people will have great conversations about religions, women's sexuality, gender issues and gay issues.

All liaisons between homosexuals are conducted as though they were between a chorus girl and a bishop. In some cases both parties think they are bishops.

Look, a lot of people don't think that the way that I live my life is a real thing, that it exists, that having a broad spectrum of sexual orientation is even possible.

Since I spent eighteen years of my life as a child, and nine years of that life as a pretty sexually active gay child, my complaint against the current attitudes is that they work mightily to silence the voices of children first and secondarily ignore what adults have to say who have been through these situations. One size fits all is never the way to handle any situation with a human dimension. Many, many children-and I was one of them-are desperate to establish some sort of sexual relation with an older and even adult figure.

And at some point who's to say that you cannot have sex with a child some point.

I think I must be, absolutely, a total sex object. In every sense of the word.

Maybe our gender is one thing and our sexuality is another. And that's a cool thing I think.

I don't think there is such a thing as a precise sexual orientation. I think we're all ambiguous sexually.

I think we all have a slightly gay gene inside us, don't we? It might be 0.00001 per cent as mine is, or one per cent as yours is.

I don't think sexuality defines a person. It's one small part of who you are, in my view. You are many things, and I never felt that people were defined by their sexuality solely.

I think if the world were a fair and just place, there wouldn't even need to be a gay label.

I remember stepping off and thinking that it might not be a good idea to let anyone know that I'm a homosexual, which is hilarious because I'm probably the gayest man I know. I had these huge dreams and they came to fruition so quickly.