"Battling racism and battling heterosexism and battling apartheid share the same urgency inside me as battling cancer."
-- poet Audre Lorde

"I've been out most of my life. I don't feel like I have a choice about it. I look Gay." -- MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow

"I think it's pretty obvious who I'm seeing [Samantha Ronson]. I think it's no shock to anyone that it's been going on for quite some time. ... She's a wonderful person and I love her very much. ... Maybe [I'm Bisexual]. No [I'm not a Lesbian]. I don't want to classify myself. First of all, you never know what's going to happen - tomorrow, in a month, a year from now, five years from now. I appreciate people, and it doesn't matter who they are."
-- Actress, model and singer Lindsay Lohan

“Never discourage anyone… who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” -- Greek philosopher Plato

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." -- novelist and poet, Alice Walker

"...[W]e have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us."
- author Audre Lorde

"[Her] genius resided in her insistence on bringing her whole self to whatever she was doing." -- novelist Jewell Gomez, describing poet Audre Lorde

"It's our hearts and brains that we should exercise more often...You can put on all the makeup you want but it won't make your soul pretty."
-- make-up artist to the stars, Kevyn Aucoin

"If you wanna change the world
Then you gotta change yourself
If you want
To open up your mind and let it in
Then free your heart
And let the light shine in
There’s no one else
Has all the magic that you have inside
Or knows the way
To share the gift that only you provide" -- poet, singer, songwriter Magdalen Hsu-Li

"I think anytime you face some type of fear, you're going to grow in some way. You're going to learn more about who you are in a tough spot."
-- comedian, actor, talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres

"I hate the idea that people think being gay is a choice…I was born this way and I've grown to love this part of me." -- Olympic gold-medalist Greg Louganis

"Love s the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate." -- comedian, social activist Margaret Cho

"Sexuality and gender don't change anyone's performance on the [basketball] court." -- WNBA star, Sheryl Swoopes

"Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else's life forever." -- comedian, social activist Margaret Cho

"Three events propelled my vision into reality: grief at losing my best friend, Marvin; fear at finding out that I, too, was positive; and rage at the heterosexual world because two boys, skinheads, had stabbed me and run away laughing as I lay bleeding in the gutter. These three moments together changed my life."
-- human rights activist, Cleve Jones, on what led him to found the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt

"It has been 25 years since the [AIDS epidemic] began, and 25 million people have perished. Last year, more than 3 million people died of AIDS. That’s three million coffins, three million eulogies, three million families. But the war is far from over. Every 10 seconds, someone on the planet dies of AIDS. More than 8,000 people will die today from this disease...As long as there is one person living with this virus, we cannot give up. Until there is a cure, there must be a fight…You see, we are the cavalry. We are the ones we have been waiting for."
-- author and activist, Keith Boykin

"When California passed Prop 8 [which stripped gay and lesbian couples of the right to marry] ... I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked, our community was attacked. I got married October 25. You know, I don't really talk about my sexual orientation, I didn't feel like I had to, I was just living my life and, not necessarily in the closet, but I was just living my life. Everybody that knows me personally, they know I'm Gay. And that's the way people should be able to live their lives. We shouldn't have to be standing out here demanding something that we automatically should have as citizens of this country. And I got pissed off. They pissed me off. I said, You know what, now I gotta get in your face. And that's what we all have to do now. They pissed off the wrong group of people. They have galvanized a community. We are so together now and we all want the same thing and we are not going to settle for less. Instead of having Gay marriage in California, no, we're gonna get it across the country. When my wife and I leave California, I want to have my marriage also recognized in Nevada, in Arizona, all the way to New York. ... I'm proud to be a woman, I'm proud to be a black woman and I'm proud to be Gay."
-- Comedian Wanda Sykes