A lot of kids are bullied because of their sexual identity or expression. It's often the effeminate boys and the masculine girls, the ones who violate gender norms and expectations, who get bullied.

School is very conformist, and one of the very first conforming that goes on in preschool and kindergarten is gender.

My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.

When you're young and queer and closeted, you can end up in this place where you regard your straight peers as the enemy.

If I was on a 'Modern Family' kind of show, and they said, 'You have to say that the burger is $5.55; Have a good day!'... I could do that!

Family is more than DNA, more than who we used to be, more than we can imagine we will become.

If I won the lottery I'd start a charity that helped little family hardware stores, cobblers and fruit shops open in city centres.

I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.