“If God had to go to such lengths to invite people to his birthday party, I reasoned, He probably wasn't serving very good cake.”

“Every shove, every epithet, every time I was too scared to walk down a certain hallway. Every time I got threatened. Every time I didn't report it. Every time I got called sissy or faggot or homo. Every time I sat in class waiting for a teacher to mention gay people. Every time they didn't. Every long walk to the cafeteria. Every time I stopped breathing in the locker room while I stripped to my underwear. Every time I saw a girl wearing her boyfriend's class ring, knowing Walker could go to jail because of me. Every time I burped up acid because my stomach was churning so hard. Every second I spent assessing how I dressed, how I walked, whether I lisped. Every hour I spent writing the things I couldn't say out loud. Every time I shared those words with other people.”

“Boys love hitting each other in the face. I guess it's the next best thing to a kiss.”

“I think most people treasure the skeletons in their closets. We want them to remain unrevealed for a reason.”

“My body is between his spread legs. Even though he’s silent, his chest rises and falls like he has just stopped running. I know he wants me. I shut my brain down, ignore what a mistake this is, and lean forward and kiss the side of his neck. He jumps slightly and I lick his skin. I hear him groan and move my lips upward. A kiss cannot replace the past. But with every kiss to his skin, my hurt becomes a distant memory.”

“Thoughts by a graveside are too dark and deep to be sustained for any length of time. Sooner or later the hurt mind turns to the sun for healing, and this is as it should be, for otherwise, what future could any of us hope for, but madness?”

“The man exhaled and wondered. He thought about the squid, and he thought about summers divested of chill and abundant with the strange precocity of wild laughter, of warm days spent tracking footfalls in warm sands, of that electric mane of hair, as black as starlight, wheeling and blowing into her eyes and his mouth as the air accelerated over the water. He thought about the dresses, as candid and diaphanous as photographs captured of butterflies in flight, packed up, boxed in, sent away.He thought about domestic sounds smote to dark corners in dim rooms as vast and terrestrial as forsaken landscape, sounds that should not ever be pursued and evicted from this hillside house, sounds that had as much utility and purpose as the wood fashioned to stabilise the house, sounds who proved the most generous tenants he could have ever invited to share the burdensome wealth of his privacy, sounds who left like friends do when they mean not to return, without word or signal or symbol, but with the cruelty of caprice and the loveless whispers of memories receding to a breakwater of ruin.He thought about how sad he had become, and how ugly, and how fast. He thought about all the mornings covertly spoiled by a ramshackle attack of tears, he thought about the immeasurable distance from his house on its hill to the first forge of shoreline by the bay, he thought about the dialogue of terns and the sordid mystery of snow, but he fell asleep thinking about summers ended and the squid, at rest in a shoebox in the bathroom.”