The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

And if I love him a little bit more today, I’ll love him a whole lot more tomorrow.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that trying to be anyone other than yourself will never make you happy. Any road, how do you know people won’t like you if you don’t ever show them the real you?

Come on, we only get one chance at life. This isn't a dress rehearsal.

But he reminded himself that everyone was busy steering a course through their own dramas, that everyone was grappling with their own challenges in life. They're all busy coloring themselves in.

Yeah, but one thing I've learned is that if you try to do that, you never do put the past behind you - it just tags along in the present. And it burrows into you like some kind of poison. It's only by facing up to it and dealing with all the feelings it brings up that we can learn from it and move on.

He’d survived by keeping the experiences that had most affected him to himself.

If only all my life could be like this. If only I could always feel this free.

I love you a little bit more than yesterday and a little bit less than tomorrow.

Because he could see now that, just by being open about their feelings, every single person had the chance to change the world.

We have been taught to hide. We have been taught to remain invisible. We have been taught to be ashamed. It is time to get visible, stand up, and be proud.

how can I expect George to accept me if I’m not brave enough to accept myself?

I can’t go on living like this. I might have thirty years left. I want them to be happy.

How could the world learn to accept people like me if we all stayed hidden away? If we all continued to hide away our love like it’s something to be ashamed of?

In some ways I'm like a picture that hasn't been colored in yet. Or one that I'm still in the process of coloring in...

He remembered comparing himself to one of Reenie’s pictures that was still being coloured in; he could see now that he’d always be colouring himself in, just as everyone else was. But that was fine. Because the picture he was working on was much richer and much more colourful than it used to be.

He wondered if it ever occurred to all those people who socialised without any unease at all just how torturous it was for someone like him to be thrust into that kind of situation.

No one ever stops to think I might have lived through experiences that have left me wary of opening myself up.

There are billions of people in this world and not a single one of them cares about me.

He held her paw in his hand and stroked her soft

The longer you leave it, I rekon the harder it is.

well, in fact, 2003 was the end of “gross indecency”; and 1989 saw the highest number of arrests.

learn to love his true self for the first time in his life.

Albert remembered reading somewhere that you could pick up more germs during a short journey on the London Underground than you could from licking a toilet bowl.

It’s so upsetting to think people could be so horrible to you, that they could want to hurt you, to just hack away at your happiness—and your own parents too. They’re supposed to be the ones who look after you and love you just the way you are. They’re supposed to want you to be happy.

Even though decriminalization happened in 1967, it only applied to people over the age of twenty-one, and they still weren’t allowed to meet in public places—so the police carried on raiding bars and cruising grounds for years. In fact, there were more prosecutions carried out against gay men in the seventies than there were in the sixties. And those who were convicted would end up on the sex offenders’ register, alongside rapists and pedophiles. They’d often lose their jobs; the law offered gay people no protection from discrimination in the workplace.

There was no question that his feelings had shaped who he was; they were a huge part of his identity. And this may have been the source of shame to him in the past, but now he felt ashamed of himself for hiding it. He didn’t want to hide it any longer.

there’ll always be small-minded people like that taxi driver. There’ll always be small-minded people like Jack Brew.

love you a little bit more than yesterday and a little bit less than tomorrow.

Maybe because straight people have never been made to feel ashamed of who they are. Maybe because it’s never been illegal to be straight.

And they dream that—one day—they too will find a place where their love can be accepted, a place where their love can be free.