I'm not a Pollyanna sort of kumbaya type.

I'm 52, which means I don't really... I was never a person who celebrated birthdays to begin with. At this stage, it's certainly something that someone who made a big deal out of their birthdays in their 20s and 30s kind of hangs that up. Not because you're sad to be getting older. I'm thrilled to be getting older. I have so many friends who died when they were 25 and would be ecstatic to be here with me turning 50. It's a thrill and a privilege to still be alive.

I wouldn't say that holidays are manufactured by corporations, but they're certainly exploited and mined by them.

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H.

We all have our scars. That's what falling is love is all about: revealing your scars to somebody who then loves you anyway.

It really did take Billy Lucas's suicide to wake me up to, kind of, the damage of the success of the LGBT civil-rights movement - higher-profile LGBT people - has done to LGBT youth who are trapped out there in those shitholes. But I don't think we need Pride. I am still opposed, on philosophical grounds, to the flap of the rainbow windsock and the damage that does to us intellectually.

Oftentimes, when people write me 4,000-word letters, I write them back and tell them if their problem's that complicated, they probably need a lawyer or a cop, and not me.