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

The idea of what it is like to lose everything is awful.

Fixing is the illness model; acceptance is the identity model; which way any family goes reflects their assumptions and resources.

Identity itself should be not a smug label or a gold medal but a revolution.

Kids with Down syndrome are, by and large, quite affectionate and relatively guileless, and frequently, the attachments to them grow and deepen. And the meaning that parents find in it grows and deepens.

I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul.

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.