Randy Shilts · 656 pages
Rating: (18.8K votes)
“How very American, he thought, to look at a disease as homosexual or heterosexual, as if viruses had the intelligence to choose between different inclinations of human behavior.”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
“What society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social acceptability of the individuals affected with it…”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
“We will not have any of these cases in the Soviet Union,” said a Soviet delegate confidently. Don Francis couldn’t resist saying to Marc Conant in his loudest stage whisper, “And they won’t, all right.” In a stern Russian accent, Francis continued: “You have AIDS—bang, bang, bang.” The Soviets were not amused.”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
“Most importantly, the epidemic was only news when it was not killing homosexuals. In this sense, AIDS remained a fundamentally gay disease, newsworthy only by the virtue of the fact that it sometimes hit people who weren't gay,”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
“Legionnaire’s disease hit a group of predominantly white, heterosexual, middle-aged members of the American Legion. The respectability of the victims brought them a degree of attention and funding for research and treatment far greater than that made available so far to the victims of Kaposi’s sarcoma.
I want to emphasize the contrast, because the more popular Legionnaire’s disease affected fewer people and proved less likely to be fatal. What society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social acceptability of the individuals affected with it…. I intend to fight any effort by anyone at any level to make public health policy regarding Kaposi’s sarcoma or any other disease on the basis of his or her personal prejudices regarding other people’s sexual preferences or life-styles”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
“It was a truism to people active in the gay movement that the greatest impediments to homosexuals’ progress often were not heterosexual bigots but closeted homosexuals.”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
“The closeted homosexual is far less likely to demand fair or just treatment for his kind, because to do so would call attention to himself.”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
“and that it would come here too. Paul”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
“The primary cause of death was listed as cryptococcal pneumonia, which was a consequence of his Kaposi’s sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. Those, however, were only the obvious diseases. The KS lesions, it turned out, covered not only his skin but also his lungs, bronchi, spleen, bladder, lymph nodes, mouth, and adrenal glands. His eyes were infected not only with cytomegalovirus but also with Cryptococcus and the Pneumocystis protozoa. It was the first time the pathologist could recall seeing the protozoa infect a person’s eye. Ken’s mother claimed his body from the hospital the day after he died. By the afternoon, Ken’s remains were cremated and tucked into a small urn. His Kaposi’s sarcoma had led to the discovery in San Francisco of the epidemic that would later be called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. He had been the first KS case in the country reported to a disbelieving Centers for Disease Control just eight months before. Now, he was one of eighteen such stricken people in San Francisco and the fourth man in the city to die in the epidemic, the seventy-fourth to die in the United States. There would be many, many more.”
― Randy Shilts, quote from And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Randy Shilts
Born place: in Davenport, Iowa, The United States
Born date August 8, 1951
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“You know, class is like magic. There's nothing there you can point to, it evaporates if you try to analyse it, but it's real and it affects how people behave and makes things happen.”
― Jo Walton, quote from Among Others
“I have traveled the world. I have searched high and low. I have found nothing that satisfied my mind, my heart, and the deepest longings of my soul like Jesus does. He is not only the way the truth and the life; He is personal to me. He is my way, and my truth, and my life--just as He can be for anyone who reaches out to Him.”
― Lee Strobel, quote from The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity
“But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.”
― Pierre Boulle, quote from Planet of the Apes
“Il mondo gira come questo fuso... e la sola certezza è che il bene e il male si avvicenderanno sempre. Senza cambiamento non può crescere nulla di nuovo, e quando i vecchi disegni si ripetono questo accade in modo nuovo... Il volto della Signora cambia ma il suo potere persiste, il re che dona la sua vita per la terra rinasce per ripetere il suo sacrificio. A volte anch'io nutro dei timori, ma ho visto passare troppi inverni per non credere che dopo verrà sempre la primavera...”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, quote from The King Stag
“You’ve missed a lot of things. But mostly I think you’ve missed several opportunities to leave. Let me assist you to the door so that you won’t miss this next one.”
― Victoria Laurie, quote from Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye
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