Todd Haynes Quotes

I've been really interested and inspired by Nan Goldin, the photographer.

Early on, I got some criticism from other gay writers and queer theorists for being too 'assimilationist,' probably because my characters are outsiders, even in the gay world.

I don't dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the '80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it's all about status and bling now, and it doesn't say anything to me.

As far as I was concerned, either I was a homosexual or I wasn't, so making films would change nothing.

Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might.

I really like the pop culture materials of everyday life, but used in some way that elevates them to something you notice and care about.

I was listening to a lot of hip hop, music like Public Enemy that was about raising consciousness, and I realised I could feed that directly into my work, using images in a way that was a bit like sampling - taking images from diverse places, exploring the contradictions without trying to hide the seams.

There's a famous artist, Ron English, in New York, that just, or Andy Warhol for that matter, that did pop art that terrorized society. And that's, for the last like 10, 15 years, that's all I wanted to do, is terrorize society and make them look into a mirror and see what the hell we have wrought.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were gay, just for starters. They didn't have a name for it, but their primary affections and intellectual attractions were all for other men.

The only thing I can give to young gay people is that when I was growing up, there were no role models that were blokey that were men. Everybody was flamboyant and camp, and I remember going, 'That's not me, so even though I think I am gay, I don't think I fit into this world.'

I understand what rappers are talking about. I think rap is less about educating people about the black community and more about making money.

The conceptual artist Ai WeiWei illustrates the schizoid society that rapid change has produced - sometimes by reassembling Ming-style furniture into absurd and useless arrangements, or by carefully painting and antiquing a Coca-Cola logo on an ancient Chinese pot.

What is art? Art talks about life; it's subversive.

My work is my way of expressing myself without being arrested.

I don't want to paint rainbows: I want to make art that disturbs identity and challenges authority.

One result of An American Family was that I became a gay role model.

I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing.

I am camp. Lots of gay men can't cope with their campness. They are in denial about it.

Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

If 'gay' is not in your vocabulary, if being gay is not an option in your world, then you're far more likely to see your kid as anything but gay.

A culture produces ideas which are being explored, which of interest to that culture at that moment. And I think one of the things a writer can do is to take those ideas and go a bit further with them.

Serious art has been the work of individual artists whose art has had nothing to do with style because they were not in the least connected with the style or the needs of the masses. Their work arose rather in defiance of their times.

By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar.

When my brother-in-law, BIll Clinton, was elected, he had gay friends. That was a coming out.

There is a history of gay people pretending to be straight. I want to balance the sides. I'm a straight person pretending to be gay. I've had a lot of people to imitate. It's easy when you're British; we're camp by nature, anyway.