"And every year they leaped further ahead, leaving me in the dust with all my doors closed and each with a new and better deadbolt. Until I was twenty-five, I was the only man I knew who had no story at all. I'd long since accepted the fact that nothing had ever happened to me and nothing ever would. That's how the closet feels, once you've made your nest in it and learned to call it home. Self-pity becomes your oxygen."

Chapter 1, page 1

"Our stories have died with us long enough. We mean to leave behind some map, some key, for the gay and lesbian people to follow-that they may not drown in the lies, in the hate that pools and foams like pus on the carcass of America."

Chapter 1, page 2

"We are creatures of the cruelties we witness."

Chapter 2, page 37

"My failure to achieve the school's idea...