Claire Tomalin Quotes

Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality. But finding this difficult, and preferring not toadmit it, it invented a pariah state, a leper colony for the incorrigible whose very existence, when tolerated openly, was admonition to all. We queers keep everyone straight as whores keep matrons virtuous.

I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.

I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

There is object proof that homosexuality is more interesting than heterosexuality. It's that one knows a considerable number of heterosexuals who would wish to become homosexuals, whereas one knows very few homosexuals who would really like to become heterosexuals.

You can be a man who loves a woman but love someone the way a gay man loves another man or a woman loves a woman.

We have to look at queerness as a means towards challenging normativity.

I was romantically socialized as a gay man, and now that I am, for most intents and purposes, a heterosexual woman, I have to learn how to talk to straight men, which is the scariest thing I've ever done.

Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality.

A man who reads effeminate may well be consistently heterosexual, and another one might be gay. We can't read sexuality off of gender.

Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire.

When I was an undergraduate I had very badly annotated editions of Shakespeare's sonnets, all of which left out the important fact that will has a sexual sense in Shakespeare's sonnets.

I'm not a lesbian. I just think that all humans are born with the ability to be attracted to both sexes.

But I don't believe anyone begins a homosexual.

As a heterosexual man, I've never really doubted my sexuality, but I've had men in my life and thought, 'If I was gay, I'd be with him' - you know?

Anyone who is an enemy of mine, let him love women, but let he who is my friend rejoice in men.

Boys always like to see girls kiss. I don't get it; girls don't want to see boys kiss.

I think we won't be able to understand the operations of trans-phobia, homophobia, if we don't understand how certain kinds of links are forged between gender and sexuality in the minds of those who want masculinity to be absolutely separate from femininity and heterosexuality to be absolutely separate from homosexuality.

If I hadn't been born a woman, I would have certainly been gay.

I believe that the fact and the reality of homosexuality and heterosexuality and of opposite and same-gender unions should be taught in our public schools without a value judgement system also being offered.

The spirits of Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld and Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebbing waft through the text to lend 'The Third Sex' an air of scientific authority.

I'm a straight guy and I date women, but I get on really well with gay guys. I'm very comfortable with my sexuality. The weirdest thing for me is when straight guys get really freaked out by gay guys. It's almost like they're insecure in their own sexuality. For me, I can be in a room full of gay men and have fun.

All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.

Regardless of the cultural system, social pressure to appear straight seems to be fairly intense cross-culturally. Indeed, one is inclined to wonder, if being straight is just natural, why does it require quite so much policing?

If the Liberals' law is passed, will sex education in the schools, including elementary grades, include the same portrayals of sexual activity which presently exist in heterosexual instruction? Will there be the same presentation of homosexual activity? Of course there will.

I have been very clear to everybody that just because I'm getting married does not mean I call myself a straight.