"We stay this way until twilight colours the window and the hour calls me home."

"If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the painful process of finding it."

"It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other. Yes, the differences between male and female are biological, but if you look at biology as a matter of percentage, there aren't a whole lot of things that are different. Race is different purely as a social construct, not as an inherent difference. And religion - whether you believe in God or Yahweh or Allah or something else, odds are that at heart you want the same things. For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that."

"The pink-haired boy is scared, so incredibly scared - only the thing you've most wished for can scare you in that way."

"It is a horrible wonderful thing to be in love with you. To get to hear you sing for hour after hour but never be the subject of the song. To listen and listen and listen."

"Invoking the moral high ground somehow makes you lose it. Using a secret as a weapon makes you almost as bad as the transgressor."

"It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored."

"He was beautiful in the way that a breeze is beautiful-the kind of beauty you feel gratitude for."

"Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience."

"It's not easy, she says, in that voice that mothers have, that mix of unwanted knowledge and small consolation. "Whatever you had-I don't know exactly what it was, and that's fine. But it must not be easy for you. You miss him, and that's okay. But you have to figure that if it's too hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go."

"But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself."

"He doesn't want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last party, last night, last day, last goodbye), and then the world will change forever and he will go to college and eventually become an adult. That is not what he wants. He does not want those complications, that change. Not now."

"The way you're singing in your sleepThe way you look before you leapThe strange illusions that you keepYou don't knowBut I'm noticingThe way your touch turns into arcsThe way you slide into the darkThe beating of my open heartYou don't knowBut I'm noticing."

"It's b******* to think of friendship and romance being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variatons of the same desire to be close."

"Self-preservation isn't worth it if you can't live with the self you're preserving."

"I try to convince myself that it's the alcohol talking. But alcohol can't talk. It just sits there. It can't even get itself out of the bottle."

"I had yet to learn that when it came to gender, I was both and neither."

"We are young and the night is young. We are in the middle of somewhere and we are feeling everything."

"Some people are given relatively fair lives. But others-they carry the burden of the unfairness of the world."

"One of the protestor's sign catches my eye. HOMISEXUALITY IS THE DEVIL'S WORK, it says. And once again I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn't make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after."

"Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head."

"Dreaming and loving and screwing. None of these are identities. Maybe when other people look at us, but not to ourselves. We are so much more complicated than that."

"I wanted love to conquer all. But love can't conquer anything."

"Now she's lit by the warm orange spreading from the horizon as not-quite-day, becomes not-quite-night."

"You'd think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it's painful."

"The word I think of is precarious. I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them."

"Max is a marvel to us. He will never have to come out because he will never have been kept in. Even though he has a mom and a dad, they made sure from the beginning to tell him that it didn't have to be a mom and a dad. It could be a mom and a mom, a dad and a dad, just a mom, or just a dad. When Max's early affections became clear, he didn't think twice about them. He doesn't see it as defining him. It is just a part of his definition."

"Do you wonder why we wander? Cal had asked.It was the night of the first snow; you could hear the branches bending and the iciclesfalling outside the window, beyond the wall.They were warmth together. They were hot breath and blankets and wrapping themselves."

"Depression has been likened to both a black cloud and a black dog. For someone like Kelsea, the black cloud is the right metaphor. She is surrounded by it, immersed within it, and there is no obvious way out. What she needs to do is try to contain it, get it into the form of the black dog. It will still follow her around wherever she goes; it will always be there. But at least it will be separate, and will follow her lead."

"But once upon a time - that would be our time - a telephone cord seemed like nothing less than a lifeline.It was your attachment to the outside world and, even more than that, your attachment to the people you loved, or wanted to love, or tried to love. Everything about it was fitting - the way it curled in on itself, the way it got so easily tangled, the way you could pull it only so far before it kept you in place.Twisted and knotted and essential."

"I have never wanted a lover. In order to have a lover, I must go back to the root of the word. For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to be loved."

"Whatever you had -- I don't know what it was, and that's fine. But it must not be easy for you. You miss him, and that's okay. But you have to figure that if it's too much hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go."

"What's the point of something virtual if it doesn't end up being real?"

"It's been said of me that I know how to love well, if any person alive can possess such knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us.It is all such a blessing-in the beginning, and the end, and the during."

"I find my greatest strength in wanting to be strong and my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave....If there's no feeling of fear then there's no need for courage."

"Just when we stopped wanting to kill ourselves, we started to die."

"There are many things that can keep you in a relationship. Fear of being alone, Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life.A decision to settle for something that's okay. Because you don;t know if you can get any better. Or maybe there's the irrational belief that it will get better even if you know he won't change."

"This blue shirt i have is practically the same color as my jeans, and looking all-blue is something only cookie monster can pull off."

"I want to have faith in strangers. I want to have faith in what we're all going to do next. But I'm worried. I see things shifting from United We Stand to God Bless America. I don't believe in God Bless America. I don't believe a higher power is standing beside us and guiding us. I don't believe we're being singled out. I believe much more in United We Stand. I have my doubts, but I want it to be true. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we really came together, if we really found a common humanity? The hitch is that you can't find a common humanity just because you have a common enemy. You have to find a common humanity because you believe that's true."

"We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we're wrong. Someone we trust."

"You can't know what it is like for us now--you will always be one step behind.Be thankful for that.You can't know what it was like for us then--you will always be one step ahead.Be thankful for that, too."

"How did my world get so small?"

"The houses have been condemned on Memory LaneI'm tired of this struggle that leaves everything the sameI've tried so hard to make it workthat I'm dying insideWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowPromises that remain promises are useless and they're cheapI wish I could put a price on words so I could make them keepI put so much faith in youI lost all my faith in meWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowI'm giving up on giving upI can't leave it all to prayer'Cause the first step in getting betteris knowing what's not thereYou said you'd make it betterand that just makes it worseWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowYes, I want my life to lastSo you can't have my tomorrowNo, you can't have my tomorrow."

"If we actually thought about every decision we made, we'd be paralyzed ... You have to decide which decisions you're actually going to make, and then you have to let the rest of them go."

"The feeling that the world is full of people who think different is synonymous with wrong."

"There were so many other people in my life.I had spent all of my time listening,learning the longings we all have in common.I never took the time to hear them in myselfand I heard them speaking to him.The desire for desire, that hopefor hope, the possibility of everythingtruly possible. I had so many friends,so many nods and conversations,so many things I'd always wantedto say to someone."

"Breath and heat and contact and shirts off and skin on skin and smiles and murmurs and the enormity revealing itself in the tiniest of gestures, the most delicate sensations."

"You can't wander around and think the wandering will call them back."

"Betrayal. Lust. Secrecy. Devotion. I think we do these things to feel more alive. When the truth is that alive is alive -- you can feel it in anything, if you give it a chance."

"I couldn't fight the tide, so Idecided to float along."