Having had to work twice as hard for what he deserved on merit alone, he'd developed a kind of rage, like an extra set of muscles, propelling him thr… - Michael Nava

[Henry, with Katherine Paris] She looked away from me. A moment later she said, "I have never understood homosexuality. I can't picture what you men do with each other." "I could tell you but it would completely miss the point."

There had been little about our childhood that could be described as paradisiacal. Our alcoholic father was either brutal or sullenly withdrawn. Our mother retaliated with religious fanaticism. As she knelt before plaster images of saints, in the flicker of votive candles, her furious mutter was more like invective than prayer. Their manias kept my parents quite busy, and Elena and I were more or less left to raise ourselves. Elena and I were united only in our unspoken determination to show nothing of what we felt about this embarrassment of a life that our parents had visited upon us. In this we succeeded. To the outside world we were simply quiet children, good at school, not very social, a little high-strung.

"You want me to stipulate that the cops violated her constitutional rights?"
"This is the LAPD we're talking about, Kim. It would be shocking if they hadn't violated her rights."