Homosexuality is genetically hardwired but race and gender are only ideas. OK. Just trying to keep up.

My oldest brother was stabbed thirty to forty times and strangled to death with his own belt when I was eight years old. Much of my life has been pockmarked with violence. So I had a natural interest in the topic, along with a strong home-field advantage.

I tend not to hang with 'the crowd' because I believe that at any given moment in history, the crowd is only standing somewhere because some lone, brave nutjob broke down the walls for them first.

It's very odd to observe someone else taking your identity into their own hands and getting it all wrong. I don't think most people will ever get to experience how truly weird it is.

the fact that they stole their whole shtick from Woody Guthrie and the coal-mining bards. While the alternative nation meows about personal fashion angst, the Appalachian nation still sings about unemployment.

Unlike the vast majority of people, I've been locked in a box like an animal and I've also been on the receiving end of bloody thrashings, so I feel uniquely qualified to judge which is worse.

People huddle together in doctrinaire herds, and the same jackasses who, without the slightest risk, now scream against racism are the same conformist personality types who would have carried torches in lynch mobs a century ago.