Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress.

Victory [over homophobia] may require five or maybe 20 years. Yet I have no doubt that "don't ask, don't tell" and same-sex adoption bans will be as unspeakable and inexplicable to my grandchildren as counting a slave as three-fifths of a human being.

Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it.

Maybe that is the greatest of wonders: that we can be shaped so much by those we've known closely, and equally by those we've never known at all - and that we too can change the world long after we've left it.

If God wanted teenagers to be abstinent, puberty would begin at twenty.

Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing.

If you give a man a hammer, he thinks he can solve all problems by pounding. Well, God gave men penises.