Added to their loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent, visible in the blue puffiness beneath their eyes or the way they would sometimes stop in mid-stride, look down, and shake their heads as though disagreeing with life.

My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood.

When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.

There have been hermaphrodites around forever, Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That's why everybody's always searching for their other half. Except for us. We've got both halves already.

I don’t know what you’re feeling, I won’t even pretend

Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.

She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.