""People can be cruel. People hate what they don't understand."

"But, Dad, they don't want to understand."

"Maybe they don't. But we have to find a way to discipline our hearts so that their cruelty doesn't turn us into hurt animals. We're better than that. Haven't you ever heard the word civilized?"" (13)

"Words exist only in theory. And then one ordinary day you run into a word that exists only in theory. And you must meet it to the face. And then the word becomes someone you know." (18)

"I happen to be gay.  don't think that makes a f****t. I'm also a Mexican-American. I don't think that makes a taco bender. I don't think that makes me a beaner. I don't think that makes me a s**c. And I don't think that makes me an illegal." (21)

I had a theory that everyone has a relationship with words-- whether they know it or not. It's just that everyone's relationship with words is a little different. Dad told me that we have to be very careful with words. "They can hurt people," he said. "And they can heal people." If anyone was careful with words it was my dad." (26)

"I guess life hurt everybody. I didn't understand the logic of this thing we called living. Maybe I wasn't supposed to." (70)

""Do you remember what you told me?"

"I remember," she said. "I told you that there are only two things you needed to learn in life. You need to learn how to forgive. And you need to learn how to be happy."" (100)

"Well, I guess when you found yourself in the dark, you might as well whistle.  It wasn't always going to be morning, and darkness would come around again. The sun would rise, and then the sun would set. And there you were in the darkness again. If you didn't whistle, the darkness and quiet would swallow you up." (108)

"I know you sometimes think that people are like books. But our lives don't have neat logical plots, and we don't always say beautiful, intelligent things like the characters in a novel. That's not the way life is." (116-117)

"People talk about the highway of life, but I think that's crap. Highways are nice and paved, and they have signs telling you which way to go. Life isn't like that at all." (335)

"… we had to see people because sometimes the world made us invisible. So we had to make each other visible." (354)

"I was hoping for less drama in my life. And hoping it would be calm. Yeah, I was going for calm. But no. Something else had to happen. Sure it did." (379)

"In the distance, I see a storm coming in, the dark clouds and the lightning on the horizon moving toward me. I wait and I wait and I wait for the storm. And then it comes, and the rains wash away the nightmares and the memories. And I'm not afraid." (431)

"Life had its seasons, and the season of letting go would always come, but there was something very beautiful in that, the letting go." (441)