“According to Padilla, remembered Amalfitano, all literature could be classified as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Novels, in general, were heterosexual. Poetry, on the other hand, was completely homosexual. Within the vast ocean of poetry he identified various currents: faggots, queers, sissies, freaks, butches, fairies, nymphs, and philenes. But the two major currents were faggots and queers. Walt Whitman, for example, was a faggot poet. Pablo Neruda, a queer. William Blake was definitely a faggot. Octavio Paz was a queer. Borges was a philene, or in other words he might be a faggot one minute and simply asexual the next.”

“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.”

“Tiffs among the faggots were apparently the stuff of quiet merriment.”

“They call me faggot, and freak, and Tinker Bell.. but I thought that bitch had wings, and I never once felt like I could fly.”

“When he overheard the boys whispering that he was a queer, he said he regarded that as a compliment since so many of the world’s great men had been homosexual. Alas, I’ve been sentenced to a life mundane heterosexuality. I can only hope that a few of you will be more fortunate.”

“I'm not the kind of faggot who wants to put a rainbow sticker on a machine gun.”