What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good … - Norman Mailer

You can indulge your righteous rage but the things it comes out of are pretty cheap. The trick is to make yourself an instrument of your own policy. Whether you like it or not, that's the highest effectiveness man has achieved.

For years Pershing Square has been one of the three or four places in America famous to homosexuals, famous not for its posh, the chic is round-heeled here, but because it is one of the avatars of good old masturbatory sex, dirty with the crusted sugars of smut, dirty rooming houses around the corner where the score is made, dirty book and photograph stores down the street.

I felt something shift to murder in me. I felt … that I was an outlaw, a psychic outlaw, and I liked it.