Sing You Home

You know someone's right for you when the things they don't have to say are even more important than the things they do.

Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't.

Anxiety's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far.

All I know is that I carried you for nine months. I fed you, I clothed you, I paid for your college education. Friending me on Facebook seems like a small thing to ask in return.

The music we listen to may not define who we are. But it’s a damn good start.

Every life has a soundtrack. There is a tune that makes me think of the summer I spent rubbing baby oil on my stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. There's another that reminds me of tagging along with my father on Sunday morning to pick up the New York Times. There's the song that reminds me of using fake ID to get into a nightclub; and the one that brings back my cousin Isobel's sweet sixteen, where I played Seven Minutes in Heaven with a boy whose breath smelled like tomato soup. If you ask me, music is the language of memory.

I don't know. But I do know that I'm at the stage of my life where I want forever, not right now. I know that the first person I kissed won't be nearly as important as the last person I kiss. And I also know better than to dream about things that can't happen.

There are so many things I can't believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I'll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don't have contingencies and conditions.

Beliefs are the roads we take to our dreams. Believe you can do something-or believe you can't-and you'll be right everytime.

But there is a different between mending someone who's broken and finding someone who makes you complete.

You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It's the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac and having your next door neighbor trust you to keep an eye on her preschool daughter for a few minutes while she runs out to the post office. It's the chasm between being invited to a colleague's wedding with your same-sex partner and being able to slow-dance without the other guests whispering.

The bottom line in both cases is that people don't change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into something she's not.

The only difference between a wish and a prayer is that you're at the mercy of the universe for the first, and you've got some help with the second.

The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually become like handwriting: there’s no right way and wrong way to do it. We’re all just wired differently. It's also worth noting that when you meet someone, you never bother to ask if he’s right or left-handed. After all: does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?

Prayer is like water - something you can't imagine has the strength or power to do any good, and yet give it time and it can change the lay of the land.

I tell you this as a cautionary tale: beware of getting what you want. It's bound to disappoint you.

When you want something bad, you'll tell yourself a thousand lies.

No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.

You know how I get angry sometimes? That's because it's the only way I can still feel. And I need to test myself, to make sure I'm really here.

It is so strange, to encounter an ex. It's as if you're in a foreign film, and what you're saying face-to-face has nothing to do with the subtitles flowing beneath you. We are so careful not to touch, although once upon a time, I slept plastered to him in our bed, like lichen on a rock. We are two strangers who knows every shameful secret, every hidden freckle, every fatal flaw in each other.

We Pisces, we're a special breed.

I grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason you went to a doctor was because you'd accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw.

For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.

I would rather be in minority and be right, than in the majority and wrong.

Ask a kid who's struggling in math if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he feels like a moron. Ask the math genius if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he's sick of doing all the work during group projects. Sometimes, it's better to sort like with like.

Believe me, Being gay is not a choice. Noone would choose to make life harder than it has to be.

But there's an enormous difference between an audience that's watching you because they can't wait to see what comes next and an audience that's watching you because they're waiting for you to fail.

You have to understand what you’re missing before you can really feel a loss.

How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever?

Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.