“I guess it's about what you have to give up to gain something else...Did you always have to give something up for a gain?”

“I feel like I'm taking beefcake shots for a calender," J said."Yeah there's a huge market for topless tranny academics. Right up there with the firemen.”

“Inside, a piece of him cracked; it was as though an emotion that had calcified into bone got tapped with a tiny hammer and splintered straight through.”

“People will see whatever they want to see. Parallax.”

“And no relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater. ”

“Change was as much about loss as gain, about giving something up even as you reached for something new or different. The world was opening up, not closing in.”

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”