"There's a really great book out by Wayne Koestenbaum called THE QUEEN'S THROAT. He talks about the diva or the opera queen as being an instance of retaliatory self-invention when the rejected or despised self is adored because it believes itself to be adored, and that it exacts a kind of revenge on the culture that rejected it by becoming this fabulous thing. There's an amazing thing that all oppressed peoples do, whether they're victims of racism or misogyny or homophobia or anti-Semitism. I think that there is a way in which people take hatred and transform it into some kind of style that is profoundly moving to me because it shows people's enormous capacity or the enormous power of the imagination to transform suffering powerful and great."

-- Kushner IN CONVERSATION (75)