That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.

You could say I don't want for me be seen primarily as a gay writer. I've never hidden my sexuality. It matters that I'm gay, it matters that I'm white, it matters that I'm male, it matters that I'm American. But basically it's just less and less of a big deal.

Virginia Woolf's great novel, 'Mrs. Dalloway,' is the first great book I ever read. I read it almost by accident when I was in high school, when I was 15 years old.

What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?

I know, speaking for myself, no matter what I'm able to do, no matter what book comes out and ends up on paper, I always had something bigger and grander in my head.

He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.