Michael Nava quotes - page 2

It is a sorry fact that prejudice against gays, and the violence it engenders with increasing frequency, are not yet treated by the media with the same clarity that racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, or discrimination against the disabled are. (Michael Nava)
AIDS has had the effect of forcing gay men to examine their sexual expression. View quote
Michael Nava
The fact is that most gay men and women lead, or try to lead, ordinary lives indistinguishable from those of their neighbours. View quote
Michael Nava
Our culture is in large part a majority-takes-all, reward-and-punishment system of sexual preference. It expresses itself by not only marginalizing minority preferences but by obsessively associating them with immorality and perversion. View quote
Michael Nava
This argument is not about sexual practices or particular lifestyles. It hinges on whether gay and lesbian Americans are entitled to the same enjoyment as their fellow citizens of the freedom to make choices about how to live their lives without suffering discrimination in consequence. View quote
Michael Nava
What is happening in contemporary American society is that people who prefer to be with members of their own sex no longer see this as a reason to be deprived of the rights to citizenship, family formation, and privacy. View quote
Michael Nava
What blocks gay equality is prejudice. What fuels the movement for gay equality is the conviction that this prejudice is not constitutionally protected, but that the individual rights of homosexual Americans are. View quote
Michael Nava
This struggle is not about sex. It is about privacy, individuality, and civil equality and the right of all Americans, not just gay and lesbian Americans, to be free. View quote
Michael Nava
The fighting had ended and his old routines had begun to be re-established ‑ even El Morito had reappeared, skinny and flea-ridden - but nothing was as it had been. He was like someone who had stepped into a long, dark, and frightening tunnel and, coming into the light, could not blink away the darkness that continued to cloud the periphery of his vision. The world was a more arbitrary and crueler place, and even though his family surrounded him, he knew now that he was essentially alone in it. View quote
Michael Nava
It really was a brutal place, Los Angeles, less a city than a collection of hostile villages united only in their mutual suspicion of each other and a susceptibility to disasters, natural and otherwise. Fires, floods, riots and earthquakes; it was looking more and more like Armageddon-by-the-Pacific. View quote
Michael Nava
[Alex] Big ideas don't pay the rent. (Michael Nava)
[Donati] "You couldn't have planned a worse place to put a city than LA." View quote
Michael Nava
[Larry Ross] "There are only two stages to dying, Henry. Being alive and being dead." View quote
Michael Nava
[Irene Gentry] "We all love according to our natures." View quote
Michael Nava
There had been little about our childhood that could be described as paradisiacal. Our alcoholic father was either brutal or sullenly withdrawn. Our mother retaliated with religious fanaticism. As she knelt before plaster images of saints, in the flicker of votive candles, her furious mutter was more like invective than prayer. Their manias kept my parents quite busy, and Elena and I were more or less left to raise ourselves. Elena and I were united only in our unspoken determination to show nothing of what we felt about this embarrassment of a life that our parents had visited upon us. In this we succeeded. To the outside world we were simply quiet children, good at school, not very social, a little high-strung. View quote
Michael Nava
[Henry Rios, to Paul Windsor]. View quote
Michael Nava
[Henry Rios] It has never taken much for me to dislike a cop. My automatic assumption that most of them are assholes is seldom disappointed. View quote
Michael Nava
[Henry Rios, with Josh] "I think someone's at the door." "I'll see who it is." "If it's the grim reaper, tell him he's a couple of years early." View quote
Michael Nava
[Henry Rios, with Kevin Reilly]. View quote
Michael Nava
[Gus Peña] "It's time for me to take care of me." View quote
Michael Nava
It was not quiet in my head. (Michael Nava)
[Josh] "Just listen to me. I don't want to die, Henry. I want to be like everyone else. I want my seventy-five years or whatever, but I know I'm not going to have them and it makes me crazy." He tipped his head back and swallowed hard. "I can't help resenting you. You're going to be alive after I'm dead and you'll find someone else." He drew a deep breath. "It's not fair. I had to get away from you. I had to get away from my own resentment." View quote
Michael Nava
[Edith] "If you tell a child he's bad long enough and often enough, he will act it out." View quote
Michael Nava
[Detective McBeth] "Being out of the closet is a luxury that many gay people can't afford. Maybe you can't understand that, but it's something I think about." View quote
Michael Nava
[Josh Mandel] "Most things people care about are silly. They don't think about the ones that matter." View quote
Michael Nava

Michael Nava

Occupation: American Writer
Born: September 16, 1954
Quotes count: 66
Wikipedia: Michael Nava