“I respect – and will respect – freedom of people in all their manifestations [but I will not be drawn into] statements made by leaders of the regions. My attitude to sexual minorities is simple. It is connected with my fulfilling of my official obligations. One of the main problems of the country is demographic.”

“The people who want to ban words are all too easily tempted to want to ban books and films that contain those words no matter the widely varying contexts – affirmative, playful, ironic, historical – in which those words are used. … Is it even possible to ban ‘faggot’? After all, 30 years ago writer Larry Kramer published a rather lame satire he titled Faggots. How would we deal with that? And if we want to ban ‘faggot’ what about other abusive terms gays have been called: fairy, pansy, fruit, homo, queer? Are we to ban those words as well? Is that a path we want to start down? Many of us have been called these words and most of us resent their use, but is that a justification for wholesale ‘linguistic cleansing’?”

“I don’t have children, don’t plan to have children and don’t particularly want children. If I were to adopt children, my main criterion would be that they be old enough to operate the vacuum and do some light dusting.”

“Over the 12 years we’ve been together – we just celebrated our 12th anniversary – our sex life has evolved. We’ve done things, and very occasionally people, that we sure didn’t think we’d be doing when we first started going out. We never say no to each other either. Sometimes we say ‘not now, later.’ But never ‘no.’ If he wants to try something, we do it. If I want to try something, we do it.”