Vito Russo > Quotes

“It is an old stereotype, that homosexuality has to do only with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance.”
― Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

“You can’t plead tolerance for gays by saying that they’re just like everyone else. Tolerance is something we should extend to people who are not like everyone else.”
― Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

“No one ever asks what causes heterosexuality because no one is interested in stopping it”
― Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

“The root of heterosexual fear of male homosexuality is in the fact that anyone might be gay. Straight men aren't threatened by a flamboyant faggot because they know they aren't like that; they're threatened by a guy who's just like they are who turns out to be queer.”
― Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

“America's obsession with defining homosexuality by its third syllable contrasts sharply with more human exercises from Europe.”
― Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

“Any story dealing, however seriously, with homosexual love is taken to be a story about homosexuality while stories dealing with heterosexual love are seen as stories about the individual people they portray. This is as much a problem today for American filmmakers who cannot conceive of the presence of gay characters in a film unless the specific subject of the film is homosexuality. Lesbians and gay men are thereby classified as purely sexual creatures, people defined solely by their sexual urges.”
― Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

“American society has willfully deleted the fact of homosexual behavior from its mind, laundering things as they come along, in order to maintain a more comfortable illusion. The censors removed it; the critics said, "Well, look! It isn't there"; and anyone who still saw it was labeled a pervert”
― Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

“If I'm dying from anything, it's from indifference and red tape.”
― Vito Russo

“Hollywood is too busy trying to make old formulas hit the jackpot again to see the future. Hollywood is yesterday, forever catching up with what's happening today. This will change only when it becomes financially profitable, and reality will never be profitable until society overcomes its fear and hatred of difference and begins to see that we're all in this together”
― Vito Russo