“Before, I would have been powdered and perfumed, my hair done in an elaborate style by the patient fingers of servants. The household crake would have written lines in my honor, my dress would have been new, and I would have been as beautifully turned out as glass sculpture from House Canroth. And as empty.”

“There was my life before I told a strange woman in a negligee that I was a homosexual, and now there would be my life after, two chapters so dissimilar in style and content that they might have been written by different people.”

“What would I have done if my coya had been captured or killed? My mate, Sharone. The other half of everything I am. What would I have done?”

“This is for all the people I’ll never meet. This is for the person I might have kissed had I taken a different subway line on Saturday and the person I might have been if that boy hadn’t broken my mother’s teenage heart. This is for the people I would have loved if last winter hasn’t been so cold and for the city I would have called home if I had written haikus on napkins and carried pens in dress pockets and in the knots of my hair. This is for who I was, who I am, who I might be. This is for you.”

“What would my life, have been like, if I hadn't been put up for adoption? Who would my parents have been then? Or my parent, my mother?”

“had my books been any worse I would not have been invited to Hollywood and if they had been any better I would not have come.”