Len Wein's Quotes

I was a very sickly kid. While I was in the hospital at age 7, my Dad brought me a stack of comic books to keep me occupied. I was hooked.

I would like immortality.

I've had editors over the years who couldn't find a clue if it was stapled to their butt.

I've never sat down and thought about the difference between plot and theme. To me, that's never been important.

If a story isn't working, I'm simply unable to finish it. That's what usually tells me something is wrong.

In general, shorter is better. If you can encapsulate your idea into a single captivating sentence, you're halfway home.

It all depends on which side of the desk you're sitting on.

Lord of the Rings, I think, is far and away the most brilliantly done stuff.

The bottom line always remains the same: What is the basic humanity of the character? How do I make them resonate with the reader?

These days, it seems that if you're not already in place, you can't get there from here.

Unfortunately, there are writers whose only concern is how good they could make themselves look on a title.

What makes a story is how well it manages to connect with the reader, the visceral effect it has.

The world will step aside for nearly anyone who has the courage of his of her opinions.

There is no universal coming out process, so far as I know.

We are constantly creating ourselves by what we move toward or away from.

We each have a personal myth, a vision of who we really are and what we want. Health means that part of what you want is to give to others.

We're all here at the same time and we should celebrate that.

What worse illness can there be than acute conventionality. You should pray every night that you don't wake up with it.

You would be better off in exile than priding yourself on be like everyone else.

I try not to deal with people's hostility, though I must if they have something I need from them, as the professors did at Columbia or my landlord did.

My dearest friend in the movement is Jack Nichols. If there were no such thing as gay or straight, we would still talk and share experiences till the end of time.

My father, who was from a wealthy family and highly educated, a lawyer, Yale and Columbia, walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother, a seventh grade graduate, who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could.

We have many cases of men committing suicide rather than face their own individuality. I know of no case of a woman who committed suicide because she was gay.

Hope never abandons you, you abandon it.

But the cure for most obstacles is, Be decisive.

Interestingly, the best way to promote intimacy is to demand it.

I didn't grow up with any concept of people being deviants unless they mistreated others.

Homophobia is just that: a phobia.

Men are actually the weaker sex.

All love is original, no matter how many other people have loved before.

All who love are conspirators.

An essential idea is that if you give to some person or endeavor in life, you will make that more important.

And I've known people who came out with a sense of torture.

As I said, men value their independence in a weird way, above practically everything.

Coming out to gays is a way of affirming sanity and self-worth.

Every man wants to feel that his woman would love him apart from anything else.

Finally, fighting for gay rights, speaking out in various places and making friends, men and women, was great.

I am very proud of being the one to have coined the word.

I felt like an apostle of the obvious and people imagined that I was doing something daring.

I'm really not an avowed heterosexual. I'm no more proud of it than of being white or tall.

If every time you engage in a sex act, you go into a confession box, you will never accept your own sexuality.

It wouldn't have mattered to my mother if I married a black, was gay, lived in a commune or wore a dress.

Many people secretly think that gays are a lot happier than they are, and want to punish them.

Men spend their whole lives showing that they're strong and silent. They fight for independence the way women struggle to connect.

My father was a pedant and a bully who cared about nobody, and I was not to see him until I was eighteen.

No man wants to feel that he's there because of his woman's biological clock or because he's filling a job opening for husband or significant other.

People have known of Shakespeare's homosexuality down through the ages.

The roots of homophobia are fear. Fear and more fear.