It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you.

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.

She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

Sure, go ahead, simulate life, using only ink and paper.

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.

Man," he said, "I'm not afraid of graveyards. The dead are just, you know, people who wanted the same things you and I want." "What do we want?" I asked blurrily. "Aw, man, you know," he said. "We just want, well, the same things these people wanted." "What was that?" He shrugged. "To live, I guess," he said.

I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.