Paris Is Burning (1990)

Pepper LaBeija: Why is it that they can have it and I didn't? I always felt cheated. I always felt cheated out of things like that.

Pepper: You know a lot of those kids that are in the balls, they don't have two of nothing. Some of them don't even eat. They come to balls starvin. And they sleep [somewhere]. Or they sleep on the pier. Or wherever. They don't have a home to go to ... but they'll make, they'll go out and they'll steal something and get dressed up and come to a ball for that one night and live the fantasy.

"You can become anything and do anything, right here, right now. It won't be questioned. I came. I saw. I conquered. That's a ball."

Dorian Corey: If everybody went to balls, and did less drugs, it'd be a fun world, wouldn't it?

Dorian: To be able to blend. That's what realness is. If you can pass the untrained eye, or even the trained eye, and not give away the fact that you're gay, that's when it's real. The idea of realness is to look as much as possible like your straight counterpart.

Venus Xtravaganza: Some of them saying that we're sick, we're crazy. Some of them think that we are the most gorgeous, special things on Earth.

"They give the society they live in what they want to see. So they won't be questioned. Rather than have to go through prejudices about your life and your lifestyle, you can walk around confidently, blending in with everybody else. You've erased all the mistakes, all the flaws, all the giveaways, to make your illusion perfect."

"There's people who sit home all day, they have potential, okay. I mean they go to the balls and they prove that they have potentials on actually selling a garment. Okay, but they like, being that I have this potential the ballroom tells me, okay, the ballroom tells me that I'm somebody. When the ballroom is over, when you come home, you have to convince yourself that you are somebody. And that's where they get lost."