“About their wedding on a beach of Nantucket, after nearly 50 years together as a couple: "After years of being who we truly were only in the privacy of our homes or with a few friends, we were out in the world, under the sky, no longer pretending.” - Norman Sunshine, co-author, Double Life”
“Ryan and Jethá propose that our ancestors, at least from 200,000 years ago, were living in a world of plenty where the resources of food and sex were in abundance but were choosing to stay hungry. After a couple of hundred thousand years of this ‘Eden’ we apparently forgot who we were, got our appetites back, and before we knew it we were drowning under babies we no longer chose to dispose of at birth.”
“This is what we had become, after the first symbiotic year of our living together: a couple who needed another couple to be around.”
“And again, as always, after so many years we were still in the same place we always were.”
“After 50 years together as a couple:"Look how fast the leaves are falling now," Alan says. "The trees will be bare in a couple of days. Do you realize that we have watched the leaves fall together for more than fifty autumns?"I stand quietly, looking at Alan, letting his words sink in. I am suddenly so moved.”
“We both grew up at a time when homosexuality was not even spoken about. There were certainly no books that could help a young person understand that two people of the same sex could build a happy, productive and loving life together. When we entered our 50th year, another same sex couple told us we were ‘an inspiration’, so we began to feel we had the responsibility to make what we’ve experienced available to others. We also wanted to show people who were not gay that our life was not unlike theirs. We are all pretty much the same, so we deserve equal protection under the Constitution.”