I think there are profound differences between the civil rights struggle for African Americans and the civil rights struggle for gay Americans.
I’m not a literary writer who is wedded to notions of realism and fiction. I believe that you can write anything if you can feel it convincingly.
I think outsiders sometimes produce the best fictional perspectives on reality because they’re set apart from it, so they have a unique view from the border.
I am comfortable calling myself a writer of suspense, or a writer of thrillers; both terms are sort of interchangeable to me. I think that came from a sense of being at conflict with my true nature throughout my youth, and being afraid of discovery, and feeling as if I didn’t belong.
I think that I am profoundly influenced by writers who have explored loss, and longing, and fear. Those influences have turned me into a thriller writer, essentially.
Honestly, in retrospect, I would wish for future generations to have the ability to have a coming out process that was less alcohol-soaked than mine was.
My experience of coming out was very much centered around the bar scene. And what happened for me is that when I turned 18 and was old enough to get into certain gay bars in the French Quarter, I became a regular customer.
I do believe in the Kinsey scale, I think many of us fall in different places on the scale and I think it’s for each one of us to decide where we are on the scale, it’s not for someone else to decide for us.
I made the decision that, to be happy and to be content, I needed to live the life of an exclusive homosexual. I don’t mean an elitist homosexual, but I mean someone who is exclusively pursuing partners of the same gender.
Ultimately, I felt fortunate, because in many ways I did identify with aspects of being gay that were very stereotypical. I was a big theatre kid in high school, I was creative, I was very emotionally sensitive, even hypersensitive. I loved female divas.
I think what has been the ultimate challenge for me is being willing to be honest with myself about what works for me in terms of relationships and sexual relations. In that sense, I was pretty traditional and pretty buttoned down.
I encourage young people to refrain from putting themselves in dangerous situations in the name of validating themselves sexually.
I am one of those people, and I may be personally biased, who wishes that I had some place to come out of the closet besides a bar.
If you’re doing something, if you’re following something that is directly at odds with who you are, you’ve got to slow down and ask yourself why you’re following that dream.
If you aren’t following your bliss, there is a discrepancy in your psychology that needs to be healed, it needs to be mended.
I think for gay people to see gay people living honestly about everything they do is really a contribution.
What’s become more important to me over time is to not try to sell myself as someone that I’m not, and that begins with coming out of the closet and gradually it’s a challenge to expand that into other areas of my life.
I think the gay community, as a whole, is slighted by high-profile figures who remain in the closet. But I think that a lot of times we need to ask ourselves what that person’s role in our community would be if they were out of the closet.
I think that the most important reason to come out is your own sanity; that’s above everything else. I think that applies whether you’re a public figure or not. The closet is a terrible place to be for the person who’s in it.
I think dragging someone out of the closet who isn’t necessarily engaged in anti-gay activities can have a destructive effect on them and on us. I don’t want unwilling gay people advocating on my behalf; I think that’s a challenge.