“Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce umbilical is broken,I live with my own fragile hopes and sudden rising despair.Now I do not weep for my sins; I have learned to love themAnd to know that they are the wounds that make love real.His face illudes me; his voice, with its pity, does not ring in my ear.His maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience.I walk alone, but not so terrified as when he held my hand.I do not splash in the blood of his sonnor hear the crunch of nails or thorns piercing protesting flesh.I am a boy again--I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth.Now wine is only wine with drops that do not taste of blood.The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,I, too--and together the bread and I embrace,Each grateful to be what we are, each loving from our own reality.”

“And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose...I am a man. this miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grand my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.I shall choose my friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold.”

“He [Christ] died for me. He made His righteousness mine and made my sin His own; and if He made my sin His own, then I do not have it, and I am free.”

“I shall love my kind of love anyway, doggedly, for I must certainly do the best I can with my own nature and if my nature is to love too well or from afar or to be grateful for crumbs...well, so be it.”

“Uh… didn’t we just pretty much share we care deeply for each other not five minutes ago?” I asked cautiously. “No, we didn’t pretty much do anything and we sure as fuck didn’t pretty much share we care deeply for each other. We tod each other we’re in love,” he corrected me and my belly compressed as my heart skipped a beat. “No,” I contradicted stupidly but correctly, my heart, now racing, messing with my ability to think. “I think it was you telling me we’re in love.”His brows shot together and that was hot too. “Do you disagree?” he fired back. “Uh… no,” I replied. His brows then shot up and damn, that was hot too. “Your point?”

“ I also know that not everyone will like what I do, and that there are many people who do love my work, and so I write for them, and for my own pleasure, and try not to brood too much over those who have different tastes. And I have written enough books now that I know the self-doubt and the anxiety are part of the creative process, and drive me to keep trying to do better, and keep me from becoming too cocksure about my writing, which is a form of creative death.”