Christopher Rice Quotes

I think dragging someone out of the closet who isn’t necessarily engaged in anti-gay activities can have a destructive effect on them and on us. I don’t want unwilling gay people advocating on my behalf; I think that’s a challenge.

I think that the most important reason to come out is your own sanity; that’s above everything else. I think that applies whether you’re a public figure or not. The closet is a terrible place to be for the person who’s in it.

I had seen the gay social chronicle done abundantly and done very well. And I didn’t want to do any more of that myself, I wanted us to be included in the popular mainstream of entertainment fiction.

I think outsiders sometimes produce the best fictional perspectives on reality because they’re set apart from it, so they have a unique view from the border.

I am comfortable calling myself a writer of suspense, or a writer of thrillers; both terms are sort of interchangeable to me. I think that came from a sense of being at conflict with my true nature throughout my youth, and being afraid of discovery, and feeling as if I didn’t belong.

I do believe in the Kinsey scale, I think many of us fall in different places on the scale and I think it’s for each one of us to decide where we are on the scale, it’s not for someone else to decide for us.

I think that I am profoundly influenced by writers who have explored loss, and longing, and fear. Those influences have turned me into a thriller writer, essentially.

I don’t want to judge anyone’s sex life – but I worry that those are the only options we are giving to our young people.

It never occurred to me to write anything that didn’t include gay characters in it.

Honestly, in retrospect, I would wish for future generations to have the ability to have a coming out process that was less alcohol-soaked than mine was.

I think we need to always mimic reality in our fiction. I think that we can stir things up and reveal a truth beneath the surface in that way as well.

Ultimately, I felt fortunate, because in many ways I did identify with aspects of being gay that were very stereotypical. I was a big theatre kid in high school, I was creative, I was very emotionally sensitive, even hypersensitive. I loved female divas.