“The Initiate must be totally naked, to demonstrate that he is truly a human being and not something else in disguise like a cabbage or something.”

“Fear wears so many clever disguises it is virtually impossible to always recognize it. Fear disguises itself as the need to be somewhere else, doing something else, not knowing how to do something or not needing to do something.”

“Every human being, he believed, must do one of three basic things during his lifetime: leave something living, create something lovely, or make something better.”

“He likes those first moments, the first touch of naked skin against naked skin, of pressing into each other, his cock growing hard against Danny's. Each time it is like discovering that he's been starving in some way, a hunger or thirst in him that he's been only half aware of. Holding Danny tight, it's like finding something that he didn't know was lost. Something worth more than anything else in the world. Something he would have perished without.”

“If you truly believe in something that is totally rejected by others, then you've just made a difference.”

“There was something striking about a single key. It was like a question waiting to be answered, a whole missing a half. Useless on its own, needing something else to be truly defined.”