I loved him. We all loved him so much.” I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was...

The heart knows nothing except its own mind.

exemplar, n.It’s always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a...

Life goes on is a redundancy. Life is defined by its going on.

It’s up to you, not fate.

better, adj. and adv.Will it ever get better? It better. Will it ever get better? It better. Will it ever get better? It better.

I say good-bye to hope, but I also say good-bye to hope’s disappointment.

this is what i never allow myself to need.and of course i’ve been needing it all along.

Some of our parents were always on our side. Some of our parents chose to banish us rather than see us for who we were. And some of our parents, when they found out we...

You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?…’I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not...

If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. You memories will be my most lasting impressions.

The houses have been condemned on Memory LaneI’m tired of this struggle that leaves everything the sameI’ve tried so hard to make it workthat I’m dying insideWell, you can take my pastBut you can’t have...

Singing in the rain. I’m singing in the rain. And it’s such a fucking glorious feeling.

They have left the first stage of romance—the rhapsody of us. Where everything is you-me or me-you or a giddily tentative we. Now him and her are asserting themselves, each given a private, pensive depth....

Also, I’m not going to bedevastated or anything either way. I’m not that kind of person. I just think if you don’t say thehonest thing, sometimes the honest thing never becomes true, you know, and...

We stay this way until twilight colours the window and the hour calls me home

It was the most amazing feeling in the world. to know that something right happened, and to know that it had happened not through luck or command but simply because it was right.

She raised her hand to cut me off. “I am aware of your epistolary flirtation. Which is all well and good–as long as it’s well and good. Before I ask you some questions, perhaps you...

I think they would like the songs betterif I left out the names, or changedthe pronouns.

abstraction, n.Love is one kind of abstraction. And then there are those nights when I sleep alone, when I curl into a pillow that isn’t you, when I hear the tiptoe sounds that aren’t yours....

I can take everything on her face at face value, and that’s valuable in a friend.

People like to say being gay isn’t like skin color, isn’t anything physical. They tell us we always have the option of hiding.But if that’s true, why do they always find us?

still, what could i say? that i didn’t just feel depressed – instead, it was like the depression was the core of me, of every part of me, from my mind to my bones? that...

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I don’t usually like people. So when I do, part of me is really amused and the other part refuses to believe it’s happening.’

My face seems too square and my eyes too big, like I’m perpetually surprised, but there’s nothing wrong with me that I can fix.

With all due respect, if you’re forty-three, then I’m a fetus.

We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. We make more than dust.That’s all we ask of you. Make more than dust.

it’s not his bodythat changesright away.it’s somethinginside. he sayshe wants tobe a littleweaker. i don’tunderstand.i say ‘thinner?’and he says’no, i wantto be strongerin a differentway.’ notbecause of me,but for me.

Even though you’re not my type, gender wise, you’re certainly my type, person-wise.

This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you,...

Some days are like this. And the only way to get through them is to remember that they are only one day, and that every day ends.

How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them-you go on the bridge because you trust it will not fall the fingers will clasp because we trust...

We watch them grow, with sadness and amazement and fear. We have stepped away, but not entirely away. They know this. They sense it. We are no longer here, but we are not yet gone....

the sadness will ebbthe trouble is the time it might take

Maybe fate’s arithmetic is so diffuse that it’s not arithmetic at all.

Lily is the greatest girl who ever was.”For a moment, I think we’d forgotten where we were.And then the officers returned, and we were reminded once again.

Your Temporary Santa, “He says presents aren’t important, but I think they are- not because of how much they cost, but for the opportunity they provide to say ‘I understand you.

I’ve always known I was gay, but it wasn’t confirmed until I was in kindergarten.It was my teacher who said so. It was right there on my kindergarten report card: PAUL IS DEFINITELY GAY AND...

i am like a dead begoniahanging upside down because like a dead begonia I don’t give a fuck

It doesn’t have to be on Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn’t have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn’t have...

What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.

My mother said I should have a ‘change of scenery.’ The word scenery made be think of a play. And as we were driving around, it made sense that way. Because no matter how much...

Elijah is inexplicably moved by the broken columns and fragmented floors. He cannot help but find a meaning and a message in their poverty of stature. This is what remains, he thinks. It seems a...

If I lose it now, I will lose you, too. I know that. I hate it.

Max is a marvel to us. He will never have to come out because he will never have been kept in. Even though he has a mom and a dad, they made sure from the...

I realized I would always be missing something. That no matter what I did, I would always be missing something else. And the only way to live, the only way to be happy, was to...

We are not taught “love thy neighbor unless their skin is a different color from yours ” or “love thy neighbor unless they don’t make money as you do” or “love thy neighbor unless they...

There will always be more questions. Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go.

It was so screwed up, because the thing that made us the most powerless also gave us such power. We could make them turn away. We could bother them and challenge them and mess them...

Here’s what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that...