The room took shape in all its squalor: clothes scattered everywhere; plates of half-finished meals; the long table used as a desk, every inch of its… - Michael Nava

It had that unnatural stillness of a place where people feared to venture outside.
"You better come in before someone tries to kill you," she said. "Did you lock your car?"
"Yeah. It has an alarm."
"That won't stop anyone around here."
"Bad gang problem?"
"When I was raising my kids, they used to play out in the streets. You see any kids out there now?"

The emergence of an openly gay and lesbian population is simply the latest stage of the evolution of individual liberty, and a reaffirmation of American tradition. Gay men and women don't come out because it's fashionable, popular, easy, safe, mandatory, or conventional; they do it to be true to themselves.

All I knew about his life was that he had had the kind of childhood that turns people into psychological time bombs. How would I react when he started to go off? Did I have my own time bomb ticking away in me?