The fact is that most gay men and women lead, or try to lead, ordinary lives indistinguishable from those of their neighbours. - Michael Nava

Since then, however, his city had disintegrated around him, shattered buildings and the glassy-eyed dead transforming familiar landscapes into a circle of hell. He had felt the fear of the adults whom he had once believed were impervious to fear and invincible in their certainties. The world had taught him there are no certainties and ultimately no safety. Terrible things happened without warning or explanation. He blinked back his tears. He was not yet a man, at least not like his father or Tió Damian, but he could no longer be a child. He felt the world's enmity and he responded not with a child's grief but a man's defiance, as if his blood were being infiltrated with threads of iron.

[Padre Cáceres, to Miguel Sarmiento] "Poor people are not simply a set of diseases or potential diseases, Señor Doctor. They are human souls. If you wish to change their habits, you must learn what those habits are and why they have acquired them. You must meet the people."

I had loved so infrequently I felt a debt to those whom I had, for the reprieve from solitude.