“I gave them nothing back because all I knew was the vast amount they had taken from me, robbed me of, cheated me out of, all in the name of a God whose son bore the long hair none of us were allowed to wear any more.”

“Unbelievable. After what justhappened between us no, I don’t have any right. None at all. We’re barely acouple. We’re not even sleeping together. I have to-"What in God’s name are you babbling about?" "You’re cheating on me!" "I never cheat.”

“I knew, even as we touched that I had never wanted anything more in all my life. All my crabbed cravings were as a cupful of pond water beside the vast ocean of longing I felt surging through me. My head swam; my eyes blurred. I burned from the inside out as if my blood and bones were consumed with liquid fire.”

“I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music. They just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.”

“Faults They came to tell your faults to me, They named them over one by one; I laughed aloud when they were done, I knew them all so well before,-- Oh, they were blind, too blind to see Your faults had made me love you more.”

“...I couldn't let go of her hand. For a few moments, I looked at the shape of it, the roundness of her fingers. I realized that her hands gave me a sense of comfort because they were the most familiar part of her to me. Those hands had always been in my sight when I was a child. Those were the hands I held crossing the street, the hands that made me lunch and cooked me dinner, the hands that stroked me when I was feeling sad, the hands on the steering wheel driving me all over town, the hands whose rings I had looked at and played with, turning them around on her finger. I knew then that regardless of how we had fought and cried and how adoption had affected us both, those hands, free of words and emotional baggage, encompassed everything. They were pure love-all the love that she had for me.”