Andrew Solomon

When I was growing up, I kept hoping that I wasn't really gay because I wanted to have children. I went through a long, tortured period, so the fact that I have been able to be true to myself and have a family has been the nicest surprise of my adulthood. ”

Writing 'The Noonday Demon' turned me into a professional depressive, which is a weird thing to be. A class at the university I attended assigns the book and invited me to be a guest lecturer. ”

We think that fear must be played out in fight, with military intervention, or in flight, via isolationism - but we are not hunted game, and those are not the only options. There is also the possibility of acceptance, with its corollary of understanding and its ultimate manifestation in embracing. ”

Forging meaning is about changing yourself. Building identity is about changing the world. ”

Gay rights are not primarily marriage rights, and for the millions who live in unaccepting places with no resources, dignity remains elusive. I am lucky to have forged meaning and built identity, but that's still a rare privilege. And gay people deserve more, collectively, than the crumbs of justice. ”

We can never afford to be complacent; there is no such thing as security when it comes to human rights. ”

When I was born, the wisdom was that homosexuality was an illness; that it was caused largely by somebody's mother, and a distorted relationship with the mother. And now, as I live my life - married to a husband, with kids - it's an identity. ”

Kids with Down syndrome are, by and large, quite affectionate and relatively guileless, and frequently, the attachments to them grow and deepen. And the meaning that parents find in it grows and deepens. ”

People who are different are constantly dealing with families who don't understand them. ”

The problem is that even as you reveal the mysteries in your past, you are accumulating them in the present; complete honesty is the stuff of post-mortem, not autobiography. ”