Quotes About Acceptance

God also cheers when we come to him with our wobbling, unsteady prayers. Jesus does not say, "Come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and I will give you rest.

It would take me the better part of growing up to understand that intimacy, more than sex or even sexual orientation, was the universal battleground, and no easier for straight than gay.

I find myself combing the past these days, dreaming dreams without sleep, puzzling over my guys, the gay and the straight and the in-between. Somewhere in there is a horror of love, and to try to kill the beast in them, they take it out on us. Which is not to say I don't chastise myself for halving the world into us and them. I know that the good guys aren't all gay, or the bad all straight. That is what I am sifting for, to know what a man is finally, no matter the tribe or gender.

If it's true that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else, then I suppose a certain self-regard must've kept me above water during my decade of drowning alone. But I think that in my case it was the other way—that I learned to love myself because someone else finally loved me. Seeing myself whole in another man's eyes, deeper than any mirror, and neither of us looking away because there's so much lost time to make up for.

Fate was the issue, if anything; not guilt.

walking with on Robertson was an outing of the self-destructed, trying to make do with one day at a time.

unpossessive. Before his parents left, Al once again paid him the highest compliment about his relationship with me. "You boys are the best friends I've ever seen," he said. "You're like Damon and Pythias." It's a long way for a man to come who couldn't look me in the face for a year after Roger finally told him he was gay. A century

When you finally come out, there's a pain that stops, and you know it will never hurt like that again, no matter how much you lose or how bad you die.

Apparently long hair was enough to make you a faggot in Chicago in '68.

And thus I wonder about so many gay men I've met since, pillars of the community, out to everyone else but Mom, who still refer to their lovers as something between a roommate and a valet. Just who is being protected here, and who thinks queer is wrong?

For it turned out there were closets within the closet, and a lingering self-hatred that even the joy of connection couldn't solve. What love gives you is the courage to face the secrets you've kept from yourself, a reason to open the rest of the doors.

That is one of the shocking things about a hospital: its leveling of you to your body's weakest link. The Ph.D. in Comp Lit, the years in Paris, the wall of books—you do not wear these badges on your johnny gown. No wonder I was forever giving our resumes to doctors and nurses, as if to beg them to see us for real, see what happy lives we had left at the border, which waited still like a dog on the front stoop.

Being different was about something more than just our dicks.

So I told myself I would give it up, even prayed at night for it to be taken away, not knowing that 'it' was love.

Go without hate, but not without rage. Heal the world.

When you finally come out, there's a pain that stops, and you know it will never hurt like that again, no matter how much you lose or how bad you die.

What love gives you is the courage to face the secrets you've kept from yourself, a reason to open the rest of the doors.

It was the first time I'd ever considered that gay might not just be about whom we slept with but a kind of sensibility, what survived of feeling after all the fears and evasions of the closet.

That would be my theme, I thought: once I came out, the world was all windows.

The better you get at being just a shoulder, the more unsexed you become.

What Richard wants is what I want, what everyone in the world wants. To be accepted, to be loved for who we are, not for some playacting phony version of ourselves.

You're only who you think you are until you aren't anymore. And it isn't up to you. It's up to time. Life is timing. The test of time. We all have to take it, and none of us pass. No matter how hard you study. Perfect attendance. All that homework. Extracurricular activities. You're still getting an F, just like everyone else. Finite. Failed. Fucked.

I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.

I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. You don't want any woman to look under the carpet, guys, because there's lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, 'Mr. and Mrs. Bridge' comes closest to who I really am. I personally don't think there's one character who comes close . . . but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don't have a solid opinion about.