"We're invisible, we're like stealth lesbians,
low-flying and undetectable. Well if they can't see us,
then let's do whatever the hell we want."
-Kate Clinton

"I don't think of them as lesbian supervisors,
I think of them as county supervisors who happen to be lesbians.
A lesbian supervisor would have a very different job:
'Hey you, cut those nails before you hurt somebody.'"
-Marga Gomez (on lesbians in local government)

"There are alot of  lesbians who don't believe that they're oppressed.
It's just that they aren't aware of their oppression."
-Ruth Simpson

"Sappho wrote only of one theme, sang it, laughed it, sighed it,
wept it, sobbed it. Save for her knowledge of human love she
was unlearned, save for her perception of beauty she was blind,
save for the fullness of her passions she was empty-handed."
-Willa Cather (about Sappho)

"For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist,
misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialistic culture,
such as that of North America, is an act of resistence."
-Cheryl Clarke

"Are you a lesbian?"-a heckler
"Are you my alternative?"
-Florynce Kennedy

For a long time I thought I wanted to be a nun.
Then I realized that what I really wanted to be was a lesbian."
-Mabel Maney

"If male homosexuals are called 'gay,'
then female homosexuals should be called 'ecstatic.'"
-Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Living by Shelly Roberts

"Men often say, 'Women! Who could ever understand them?'
Don't ask a lesbian for the answer. All you'll get is a sympathetic nod."
-Joanne Brigden

"It's hard to be a lesbian comedian these days.
Like there was an easier time.
Oh, the Renaissance, that was agood
time to be a lesbian comedian."
-Kate Clinton

"Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Groom"
-the name of Robin Tyler's openly lesbian comedy album.

"What's a bridal shower if you're gay?
It's the parade of gifts that you'll never
get because you're a homosexual!.
'Come in, take a look at the blender, toaster,
silverware you'll have to buy for yourself!!!'.
Ihate that.I don't bring a gift anymore, Itake one.
I have six cuisinarts. I don't give a shit....they owe us!"
-Suzanne Westenhoffer

"Why should lesbians hate men, they don't have to fuck them!"
-Rosanne

"Some women can't say the word lesbian...
even when their mouth is full of one."
-Kate Clinton

"I can't help looking gay.
Iput on a dress and people say,
'Who's the dyke in the dress?'"
-Karen Ripley

"My bisexual dilemma was that
my gay friends thought I'm a lesbian in denial and
my straight friends thought....I'm a lesbian in denial."
-Lacie Harmon

"That word lesbian sounds like a disease.
And straight men know because
they're sure that they're the cure."
-Denise McCanles

"My mom blames California for me being a lesbian.
'Everything was fine until you moved out there.'
'That's right, Mom, we have mandatory lesbianismin
West Hollywood. The Gay Patrol busted me,
and I was given seven business days to add a
significant amount of flannel to my wardrobe."
-Coley Sohn

"If women should have to be in the military service,
they should only be lesbians who process.
We would never get around to having a war.
A war? You get the beaches wheelchair-accessible,
then we'll talk."
-KateClinton

"I think it's interesting that when you play a lesbian,
People ask you if you're a lesbian,
but if you play a serial killer,
nobody asks if you're a serial killer."
-Nora Dunn

"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry."
-Gloria Steinem

"You can't type what a lesbian is.
We're anything and everything.
The one thing in common is that
we make love to other women.
So give up trying to limit us."
-Amanda Bearse

"Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don't are ladies.
This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word.
Should one of  you boys happen upon a girl who doesn't put out,
do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady.
What you have probably found is a Lesbian."
-Fran Lebowitz

"I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses
and Prussian farm women...no woman has excited
passions among women more than I have."
-Florence Nightingale

"Hick darling...I couldn't say je t'aime et je t'adore
as I longed to do, but always remember
I am saying it, that I go to sleep thinking of you."
-Eleanor Roosevelt, in a letter to Lorena Hickok

"We love men. We just don't want to see them naked."
-Two Nice Girls

"I base most of my fashion sense on what doesn't itch."
-Gilda Radner

"I heard that in the hierarchy of reincarnation,
the lowest form is a heterosexual man.
Then as you go up the ladder,
the highest reincarnation form is a lesbian."
-Melissa Etheridge

"When she lowers her eyes she seems to hold
all the beauty in the world between her eyelids;
when she raises them I see only myself in her gaze."

"I became a lesbian because of women,
because women are beautiful, strong, and compassionate."
-Rita Mae Brown

"Natalie, my husband kisses your hands, and I the rest."
-Colette, in a note to Natalie Barney

"Why should I paint dead fish, onions, and beer glasses?
Girls are so much prettier."
-Marie Laurencin, artist

"Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me,
where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me
--so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her.
And in that growing,we came to separation,
that place where work begins."
-Audre Lorde

"Are there many things in this cool-hearted world
so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another?"
-Mary McLane, The Story of Mary McLane by Herself

"Heterosexuality has been forcibly and subliminally imposed on women.
Yet everywhere women have resisted it,
often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment,
psychosurgery, social racism, and extreme poverty."
-Adrienne Rich

"There is nothing mixed up about a woman who loves women,
who wants to have sex with them, or who identifies as a lesbian.
 It is society that is mixed up because it punishes people for not
conforming to its gender stereotypes."
-Edward Stein

“I'm not a lesbian -but my girlfriend is"

 "It's hard losing weight when you're a lipstick lesbian.
Can you imagine trying to eat Jenny Craig
when you've got Mary Kay on your face?"
-Anonymous

"It's not that I don't like penises. I just don't like them on men."
-Lea DeLaria

 "When my mother found out I was gay she sent me to Juvenile Hall.
That's smart. Sending me to live with five hundred girls who can't get out!."
-Kat Howard

 "Introductions are tricky in a lesbian relationship. It's a wordgame.
To my friends she's my lover,
to strangers and family members indenial she's my roommate,
to Jehovah's Witnesses at the door she's my lesbian sex slave,
and to my mother she's Jewish and that's all that matters."
-Denise McCanles

 "People kept saying that I was going to lose my career.
Not one person, with the exception of
Ellen and her mother, said to me
'Don't worry about that. You're in love.'
We have been taught to live a lie in order to stay out of trouble.
Between a career and the love of my life,
the choice is not a difficult one. I didn't have to think twice"
-Anne Heche (to The Chicago Tribune, quoted in Curve, May 1998)

"Lesbians are typically feminine in much of their behavior,
for example they court each other for long periods of time,
sex is approved of only when it occurs within an emotional
relationship, the community is organized around couples.
 This is in complete contrast to gay men's often
promiscuity and single status."
-Martin P. Levine, ed. (Gay Men, 1979)

"At this particular moment in history when the ratios of
sexual preference seem to have gone awry and
vast numbers of homosexual men and straight single women
are roaming the range in search of love, sex, and meaningful
relations, it is obvious that these groups dress up to enhance their
sexual attraction while lesbian women and heterosexual men
dress more carelessly or to conceal their bodies,
having no urgent need to attract the judgmental male eye."
-Susan Brownmiller, Femininity, 1984

"...Heterosexual women are really on an ego trip.
If they hear a woman's a lesbian, they think
-she wants my body! This idea is based on fear and ignorance,
just like the idea that male homosexuals are child-molesters."
-Ruth Simpson,
in an interview in Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker,
The Gay Crusaders, 1972