viraho:

I’m not really scared of AIDS. Not for myself. I’m scared of having to watch more people die in front of me… I’m sure when I die, I won’t really die, because I live in many people.

Keith Haring, Journals, pp.162-3

Some realized the cruel irony of the obviating ubiquity of “I Will Survive”, the disco anthem, at a time when the dancers were already succumbing to amoebiasis and taking every drug there was in the world to go on dancing.

James McCourt, Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture p.327

Surely this “gay cancer” could only affect older West Village mustached disco queens who went to the baths every day, not youthful smooth-faced East Village anarchist performance artists in skinny neckties. I was wrong about that.

Tim Murphy, New Yorkers Recall the Days of the AIDS Epidemic, NYT

A couple of years later, the Times obits section was commonly referred to as the Gay Sports Page, because we would count the number of apparent AIDS-related deaths before checking the other news.

Murphy, New Yorkers Recall the Days of the AIDS Epidemic, NYT

THE THING THAT’S IMPORTANT ABOUT MEMORIALS IS THEY BRING A PRIVATE GRIEF OUT OF THE SELF AND MAKE IT A LITTLE MORE PUBLIC WHICH ALLOWS FOR COMMUNICATIVE TRANSITION, PEELS AWAY ISOLATION, BUT THE MEMORIAL IS IN ITSELF AN ACCEPTANCE OF IMMOBILITY, INACTIVITY… DON’T GIVE ME A MEMORIAL IF I DIE. GIVE ME A DEMONSTRATION.

David Wojnarowicz, In the Shadow of the American Dream, p.206

WHEN I JOINED ACT UP, I WAS A NICE JEWISH BOY FROM THE SUBURBS, AND I WAS FORCED TO UNLEARN THE PRETTY LIES THAT SOCIETY DRILLS INTO US TO KEEP US IN CHECK: THAT THE POLICEMAN IS OUR FRIEND, THAT THE GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE CARE OF US, AND THAT “GOOD” PEOPLE DON’T LIE DOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET AND GET ARRESTED.

Jay Blotcher, Written statement

[Larry Kramer] would say that he had lost five hundred friends and acquaintances who had died. If you think about it, that’s the size of a small town in Germany.

Gordon Ingram, Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance

But in ACT UP, you had to kiss everybody, because you couldn’t be afraid of people with AIDS. So you had to demonstrate that you were not afraid of people with AIDS. So you had to kiss everyone you met.

Schulman and Hubbard, Interview with Gregg Bordowitz, ACT UP Oral History Project

[T]here was a time when they didn’t want to bury people with AIDS in the ground. They thought once they buried a body with AIDS in the ground, you would grow flowers with AIDS.

Lawrence, p.64

At times I feel like there’s nothing to be afraid about dying. I mean, look at how many people have done so before me.

David Wojnarowicz, In the Shadow of the American Dream, p.211

Quotations are selected from Kenneth Goldsmith’s Capital