"The people I choose to admire are not necessarily popular, not necessarily terribly well known, but they each have something to offer me, a lesson, a cautionary tale, an idea, an inspiration."

“We were taping the episodes of the show. I guess they had decided they could now fit my face onto a TV screen, and they wouldn't have to letterbox it.”

“I am secretly a costume drama queen. Oo, I love me some Merchant Ivory films! I do! If there is a petticoat and Helena Bonham Carter, already I can feel the tears well up in my eyes. I love me some period films! And I know that I will never be in them. I will never be in any of these movies, unless I am laying down on my side smoking some opium. And I get offered movie roles all the time, but I say, "No! No! I don't want to play a manicurist. I don't want to play a really pissed-off liquor store owner. I don't want to go nowhere with a chicken under my arm. I don't want to play an exceptionally good student, I do not want to get off a tour bus and take numerous photographs, I do not ever want to utter the phrase, 'Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond'! I don't want to write down all my memoirs about being a geisha!" What it is, is that I cannot run up a wall!!”

“Why do they think "fat dyke" is an insult? To me that means, "I'm-a eat fried chicken and pussy.”

“Trying to fault gays and lesbians for standing up for their rights is backwards and unconscionable. We have no idea how powerful we actually are. We were never considered part of the general, respectable population.”

“Talking to John Kerry is like talking to an Ent. You know, the tree people from Lord of the Rings... I believe that all Americans should have affordable healthcare...”

“I would be happy to have a gay child. He would be a Boy Scout, and he would teach all the other Boy Scouts how to build a fire with two sticks and a back-handed compliment.”