Two Boys Kissing

Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?

Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given.

We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. We make more than dust. That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust.

The first sentence of the truth is always the hardest. Each of us had a first sentence, and most of us found the strength to say it out loud to someone who deserved to hear it. What we hoped, and what we found, was that the second sentence of the truth is always easier than the first, and the third sentence is even easier than that. Suddenly you are speaking the truth in paragraphs, in pages. The fear, the nervousness, is still there, but it is joined by a new confidence. All along, you've used the first sentence as a lock. But now you find that it's the key.

He has no idea how beautiful the ordinary becomes once it disappears.

There are all these moments you don't think you will survive. And then you survive.

When you need to hold onto something, you should. Whatever gets you through, take it.

It is very hard to stay alive just for your own sake. It is very hard to stare into day after day without another familiar face staring back. It turns your heart into a purposeless muscle.

Freedom is also about what you will allow yourself to do.

Things are not magical because they've been conjured for us by some outside force. They are magical because we create them.

It is hard to stop seeing your son as a son and to start seeing him as a human being. It is hard to stop seeing your parents as parents and to start seeing them as human beings. It's a two-sided transition, and very few people manage it gracefully.

You spend so much time, so much effort, trying to hold yourself together. And then everything falls apart anyway.

There is always something new to learn about the person you love.

Laughter rarely lasts longer than a few seconds, it's true. But how enjoyable those few seconds are.

There is no reason that we should ever be ashamed of our bodies or ashamed of our love.

There is the sudden. There is the eventual. And in between, there is the living.

You can give words, but you can't take them. And when words are given and received, that is when they are shared. We remember what that was like. Words so real they were almost tangible. There are conversations you remember, for certain. But more than that, there is the sensation of conversation. You will remember that, even when the precise words begin to blur.

The world is full of people who think different is synonymous with wrong.

It's one of the secrets of strength: We're so much more likely to find it in the service of others than in service to ourselves.

We gather the things we learned, and they don't nearly add up to fill the space of a life. You will miss the taste of Froot Loops. You will miss the sound of traffic. You will miss your back against his. You will miss him stealing the sheets. Do not ignore these things.

Pink is female - but why? Are girls any more pink than boys? Are boys any more blue than girls? It's something that has been sold to us, mostly so other things can be sold to us.

With some people, the minute you start talking, it feels like you've known them for years. It only means that you were supposed to meet sooner. You're feeling all the time you should have known each other, but didn't. That time still counts. You can definitely feel it.

If you let the world in, you open yourself up to the world. Even if the world doesn't know that you're there.

Freedom isn't just about voting and marrying and kissing on the street, although all of these things are important. Freedom is also about what you will allow yourself to do.

We know that some of you are still scared. We know that some of you are still silent. Just because it's better now doesn't mean that it's always good.

This is what you do now to give your day topography--scan the boxes, read the news, see the chain of your friends reporting about themselves, take the 140-character expository bursts and sift through for the information you need. It's a highly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn't really care what you have to say. The illusion of participation can sometimes lead to participation. But more often than not, it only leads to more illusion, dressed in the guise of reality.

...he hopes that maybe it'll make people a little less scared of two boys kissing than they were before, and a little more welcoming to the idea that all people are, in fact, born equal, no matter who they kiss or screw, no matter what dreams they have or love they give.

He's on the verge of it--we can tell. He is on the verge of finding that very hard truth--that it will never be complete, or feel complete. This is usually something you only have to learn once--that just like there is no such thing as forever, there is no such thing as total. When you're in the thrall of your first love, this discovery feels like the breaking of all momentum, the undermining of all promise. For the past year, Neil has assumed that love was like a liquid pouring into a vessel, and that the longer you loved, the more full the vessel became, until it was entirely full. The truth is that over time, the vessel expands as well. You grow. Your life wides. And you can't expect your partner's love alone to fill you. There will always be space for other things. And that space isn't empty as much as it's filled by another element. Even though the liquid is easier to see, you have to learn to appreciate the air.

The world is quieter now. It is never quiet, but it can get quieter. What strange creatures we are, to find silence peaceful, when permanent silence is the thing we most dread. Nighttime is not that. Nighttime still rustles, still creaks and whispers and trembles in its throat. It is not darkness we fear, but our own helplessness within it. How merciful to have been granted the other senses.