If I could have him like this in my dreams every night of my life, I'd stake my entire life on dreams and be done with the rest.

All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.

There is always going to be a risk in a new love, a difficulty to be overcome, and more so considering all the challenges facing gay love, particularly in an adolescent. The desired other person could turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, could hurt us, could even ruin us. But the risk has to be taken.

As we walked, I began to wonder what the opposite of molting was and why, unlike the body, which sheds everything, the soul cannot let go but compiles and accumulates, growing annual rings around the things it wants and dreams and remembers

I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.

Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. (p. 225)

Whoever said the soul and the body met in the pineal gland was a fool. It's the asshole, stupid.