Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.

I think we have systematically and critically harmed ourselves and many young people by advising them not to try things.

People trying to separate people rather than bring us together... please. You don't just see it in America. It's all over the world.

Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.

Then the question began to live under my blankets: How did lesbianism begin? What were the symptoms? The public library gave information on the finished lesbian--and that woefully sketchy--but on the growth of a lesbian, there was nothing. I did discover that the difference between hermaphrodites and lesbians was that hermaphrodites were "born that way." It was impossible to determine whether lesbians budded gradually, or burst into being with a suddenness that dismayed them as much as it repelled society.

You never get over the fear of writing.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.