“Nobody's happy. What's happy? Happiness is over when the lights come on”

“How could I possibly NOT be disappointed by what I would find? Nothing had ever met my expectation, since nothing could compete with my doctoring imagination, my pathetic compulsion to make the wor...”

“It took so long to find you...and now I don't want it to change. I want it all set in amber. I want us and nobody else in the most selfish way you can imagine. I can't help it--I'm old-fashioned. I...”

“I couldn't writeor wouldn't write, at any rateunable to face the grueling self-scrutiny that fiction demands”

“Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory: some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth.”

“Two days after his twelfth birthday, a fortnight before his father was jailed for debt, Charles Dickens was sent to work in a blacking factory. There, in a rat-infested room by the docks, he sat fo...”

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”

“My request today is simple. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Find somebody, anybody, thats different than you. Somebody that has made you feel ill-will or even hateful. Somebody whose life decisions hav...”

“Dont we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be doing that has noth...”

“The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkThat we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.”

“...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.”

“Joy is thankfulness, and when we are joyful, that is the best expression of thanks we can offer the Lord, Who delivers us from sorrow and sin.”

“This is our big chance to see what people think of us. The real us. We have to show em there's nothing to be afraid of. If we don't get over our fears, they never will.”

“Denying what you are didn't keep people from knowing what you are.""And flaunting it isn't what saved you."Ykka takes a deep breath. The muscles in her jaw flex, relax. "And that would be why I ask...”

“I didn't come up with the lie. It wasn't mine. They handed the lie to me, and I tried like hell to make it work for a while.”