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

The idea that the reader is important enough to me that I'd tailor my words to either please or offend them always seems amusingly alien to me.

Negative opinions about me don't faze me unless I respect the person giving the opinion, which is rare. And if it's someone I respect, I usually take heed of what they're saying. But if I don't respect them, which I usually don't, what's the point?

Many of the racial problems in America are caused by the fact that people are innately tribal, and politicians know how to exploit that biological fact.

My crazy parents and those crazy Catholic nuns didn't do a good job of forcing me to keep the Ten Commandments, but they kept me forever fixated on the very idea of a taboo.

I could have completely lost my mind or became a junkie or abandoned all sense and judgment and committed some rash, stupid act that would have sent me right back into the cage. Instead, I chose to be happy - but not so much for the sake of happiness as for spite.

As I view it, spending over two years in a cage is far worse than having your face pounded and dealing with a black eye for a week or two.