The absence of words is the absence of intimacy. There are experiences that are starved for language.

If your love didn't always contain the possibility of loss, it would be very different from human love as we know it.

I did grow up in a household in which I felt that to be myself was to damage the people I loved.

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.

I don't believe that there is anyone of faith whose faith would not be strengthened by those experiences of family.

Every organization does good and bad things.

There is also somehow the idea that this gay thing is all just about indulgence in carnal pleasure. When I was twenty and felt that nobody could know I was gay, I was having sex with strangers in public parks. I don't think it was evil exactly, but it wasn't so great either. There was nobody particularly benefiting from it, except, I suppose, to the extent that it gave some pleasure to me and perhaps whomever I was with.