It's deeply humbling to realize that there is no such thing as a society with a purchase on truth.

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

I have a very difficult time believing that there is some being who is going to invite me into heaven or not on the basis of whether I wear a yarmulke or whether I have been sprinkled with water while someone said something. Some of the ritual is very beautiful, but I find it difficult to believe that it really has to do with God. I believe that dogma comes from man.

Depressed people cannot lead a revolution because depressed people can barely manage to get out of bed and put on their shoes and socks.

I had known a couple of people who had died, but the loss of my mother contained something of the profoundly unknowable.

Parenthood always involves recognizing your child as separate and different from you.

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.