Latest Dan Savage Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Don't move to Seattle and write a stupid sex advice column. That's a waste of time and you need to grow up and get serious.

  Dan Savage

  Growing Up, Stupid, Moving

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Oh, my god. I'd be a terrible doctor. I don't like to touch other people. There's a lot of gruesome stuff in my line of work to feel or to admit. I'm sure everyone's expecting me to say "proctologist," but actually no, I don't want to be a proctologist. Probably want to be a dentist, because you don't have to touch much of the other person's body, just their face or mouth.

  Dan Savage

  People, Dentist, Expecting

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I always kind of divided the gay guys I met up into two groups when I first started coming out. There were the guys who thought there was something fundamentally wrong with them and hated themselves and were so burdened with shame and internalized homophobia. It just really paralyzed and shredded them. And then there were guys like me who thought, "I'm fine, everybody else is crazy. My church is sick and the family's crazy, but me? I'm fine."

  Dan Savage

  Crazy, Gay, Sick

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm 52, which means I don't really... I was never a person who celebrated birthdays to begin with. At this stage, it's certainly something that someone who made a big deal out of their birthdays in their 20s and 30s kind of hangs that up. Not because you're sad to be getting older. I'm thrilled to be getting older. I have so many friends who died when they were 25 and would be ecstatic to be here with me turning 50. It's a thrill and a privilege to still be alive.

  Dan Savage

  Mean, Getting Older, Kind

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I started doing drag in Seattle because I started doing my column before I moved here, and then moved here and wanted to be able to go out and do things as Dan Savage without being recognized the next day, because the column was just in Seattle and it was kind of a sensation and I was beating people up. I was really worried and I didn't want to beat somebody up in a column and have that person know what I look like when I didn't know what they looked like.

  Dan Savage

  Next Day, People, Savages

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm an agnosto-theist. I cross myself on airplanes. I pray when I'm sick. When you're sick I'll keep you in my thoughts; when I'm sick, I'm entreating a higher power.

  Dan Savage

  Airplane, Sick, Praying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• TV commercials make parenting look like there are going to be good days and bad days - like, it'll be this gentle wave, like you'll have a blissed-out, really wonderful day or two, and then, you know, then you'll have an issue. And what parenting is, is kind of earthquake.

  Dan Savage

  Good Day, Bad Day, Earthquakes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• To be gay is nothing to be proud of. It's in how you are gay that you have something to be proud of, considering the obstacles placed in your path if you are gay.

  Dan Savage

  Gay, Proud, Path

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm not good looking. I'm very strange - a very bony face on an enormous skull, and I don't like to be naked because I don't like how I look naked. And - no, no. I own a lot of my house, because I'm Irish and from people who never owned anything. So I could have a lot more trappings of wealth if every time I had 20 extra dollars I didn't pay off more of the mortgage.

  Dan Savage

  Skulls, People, House

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It really did take Billy Lucas's suicide to wake me up to, kind of, the damage of the success of the LGBT civil-rights movement - higher-profile LGBT people - has done to LGBT youth who are trapped out there in those shitholes. But I don't think we need Pride. I am still opposed, on philosophical grounds, to the flap of the rainbow windsock and the damage that does to us intellectually.

  Dan Savage

  Suicide, Philosophical, Pride

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Pride became this dogma which meant you couldn't criticize anything gay - if you were the least bit critical of gay culture or people or any gay person doing any gay thing, that was an insufficient display of pride. You were suffering from internalized homophobia. As opposed to external homophobia.

  Dan Savage

  Pride, Gay, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• You could fly under the radar a little bit. You could be a weird kid without defaulting to gay, without everyone assuming you must be gay - that was literally the last place many people went.

  Dan Savage

  Kids, Gay, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Sedaris, in his essay in the It Gets Better book, writes that when he was growing up nobody called him gay because you might as well have called him a warlock. Nobody knew what gay was.

  Dan Savage

  Growing Up, Book, Writing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• We've had a culture war roaring away, and the kinds of people who want to abuse and discriminate against gay people who are adults can't really lay their hands on us unless they want to be gay-bashers and go to jail. They abuse us from afar and in the abstract, they abuse us with checkbooks and ballots, but their kids go to school on Monday morning. And there's a gay kid. And they feel they have license to beat that gay kid up in a way that I don't think they did when I was in school. I think it's gotten worse.

  Dan Savage

  Monday, Morning, War

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• You can't have Rosie on The View and Elton John packing Mom and Pop in at Caesars Palace and gay people all over television, and then have these politicians run out there with a straight face and say that gay and lesbian relationships are a threat to the family. We are winning in the culture - which is why we'll ultimately win the political war.

  Dan Savage

  Mom, Running, War

  Source: www.rollingstone.com

• We're living through an age of irrationality and religious "fervor" I would call it religious idiocy. It's exhausting to year after year be on the receiving end of this demagoguery.

  Dan Savage

  Religious, Years, Age

  Source: www.rollingstone.com

• Most Americans don't care about gay marriage. But it matters very much to the knuckle-draggers and Christianists and whack jobs in Bush's ever smaller base.

  Dan Savage

  Jobs, Gay, Care

  Source: www.rollingstone.com

• There's always something new with sex. We lived in a world without Viagra, now we live in a world with Viagra. We lived in a world without blowjobs and anilingus in the Oval Office, and then it happens and you get to write about it. We live in a world where now the government is screwing with contraception and holding back vaccines that could save 4,000 women's lives a year, and you get to write about that. It's not as much fun as anilingus in the Oval Office, but what are you going to do? If you pay attention, there's always something new, and it's always really invigorating.

  Dan Savage

  Sex, Fun, Writing

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

• I really enjoy doing theater, but doing theater in Seattle is like dropping a brick in a bottomless well. It's gratifying, but it's almost like doing radio. It's ephemeral.

  Dan Savage

  Ephemeral, Radio, Bricks

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

• If sex isn't an important part of your marriage, you can't beef if your wife or husband does this unimportant thing with somebody else every once in a while, if you have no interest in it.

  Dan Savage

  Sex, Husband, Unimportant Things

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

• I think it's better to have limits. My limits are different from other people's limits. I'm all for freedom, I'm all for people doing what they want. I'm also all for people shouldering the consequences of their behaviors, and not being assholes, and not lying unless they need to, and being honest except when you shouldn't, and being faithful except when it's okay to cheat. I guess I'm just a mass of contradictions.

  Dan Savage

  Lying, Thinking, People

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

• My dad and mom were more like World War II-era parents, even though it was the 1960s, because they were both born in the '40s. They were young adults before the '60s even happened, and married, and already having kids. But by the time we were adolescents in the '70s, the whole culture was screaming at parents, "You're a good parent if you're open with your kids about sex." They attempted to be open with us about sex, and it made them want to die, and consequently, it made us want to die.

  Dan Savage

  Mom, Sex, Dad

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

• Oftentimes, when people write me 4,000-word letters, I write them back and tell them if their problem's that complicated, they probably need a lawyer or a cop, and not me.

  Dan Savage

  Writing, People, Needs

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

• I feel like I'm a compassionate guy, but I also feel if somebody's grip on life or sanity is so tenuous that a joke in an advice column that usually is nothing but jokes pushes them over the edge, then if not me, it would have been a leaf blowing past them that did it, or something else. You almost have to feel that way, doing this.

  Dan Savage

  Past, Guy, Advice

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

• We all have our scars. That's what falling is love is all about: revealing your scars to somebody who then loves you anyway.

  Dan Savage

  Fall, Love You, Love Is

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.