Penalizing homosexuals does not save any innocent victims. The idea that God and the Church accept these people while they are celibate; and then if they go off and do something with someone else and both derive joy from it without any apparent harm to anyone else, the Church excommunicates them - that, to me, is bizarre.

I would certainly not want my child to be schizophrenic. I wouldn't want him or her to be a criminal either. If, on the other hand, I had a deaf child, it would help that I have developed a real admiration for Deaf culture.

I got into my first serious relationship with a man when I was twenty-three. I had, before that, sort of a typical, sad history of relatively promiscuous sexual encounters with men I didn't know, because I felt that if I were involved with people I did know, other people would know that I was gay, and it was something that I needed to keep so secret.

We don't seek the painful experiences that hew our identities, but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences.

I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.

Suicide is a crime of loneliness, and adulated people can be frighteningly alone. Intelligence does not help in these circumstances; brilliance is almost always profoundly isolating.

Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination.