Christopher Bollen

“Maybe, in the end, a home is a place where you have no other choice but to stay.”

“Paul needed to come out, not as gay or straight, but as human.”

“Women had cup sizes to track their development. Men had a ruler and hope.”

“That’s what children eventually were for their aging parents: custodians of technology, free personal IT departments keeping them from disappearing forever from the universal cloud.”

“Mills was experienced enough to understand what gay men were often forced to be in this world: romantic opportunists.”

“You know how hard it is to actually touch the world? To make a mark on it? You die and they bury you in it.”

“He tried to imagine the handsome couple by the refrigerator as two sweaty bodies in a bedroom, one on top of the other. Which did what to the other? Mills kept rotating the two men in his mind, which he never had to do when he imagined straight couples having sex.”

“All close friendships are marked with competition. Our earliest tests are against our siblings and playmates, and some of that rivalry endures amongst friends into adulthood. Like dogs play fighting, you learn not to bite hard.”