I have two nexuses of sadness about the Mormon Church. The first is the effect the Church's position on homosexuality has on Mormons.

I tend to find the ecstasy hidden in ordinary joys, because I did not expect those joys to be ordinary to me.

There is a tendency to dehumanize kids that commit crimes. The system is focused on punishment, not on rehabilitation. These kids are the most misunderstood and most cruelly treated.

Parenting is no sport for perfectionists.

It is easy to keep secrets by being honest in an ironic tone of voice.

If real experience has triggered your descent into depression, you have a human yen to understand it even when you have ceased to experience it; the limited of experience that is achieved with chemical pills is not tantamount to a cure.

If I understand correctly, part of the objection to homosexuality used to have to do with the fact that gay people didn't reproduce. Part of it seems to have to do, as a lot of Christian resistance to gayness does, with a dim view of sex that is not procreative, and that is therefore lascivious.

Some autistic people may emerge from their condition, but nobody knows when and why.

Nowadays, people often ask me when I came out, generalising from the experience of many young people who announce themselves to the world on a particular afternoon. But I did not divorce my reticence in a single sharp break. Rather, I seeped out like a spreading wine stain.

I started traveling out of curiosity, but I have come to believe in travel's political importance, that encouraging a nation's citizenry to travel may be as important as encouraging school attendance, environmental conservation, or national thrift. You cannot understand the otherness of places you have not encountered.

Dealing with depression effectively is a mark not of weakness, but of strength.

If the Mormon Church still supported polygamy, and if it appeared to be a system that was not exploitative of women, I wouldn't feel that it's my place to forbid it.

I have no ambitions. I only have obsessions.

If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes.

I have a very difficult time believing that there is some being who is going to invite me into heaven or not on the basis of whether I wear a yarmulke or whether I have been sprinkled with water while someone said something. Some of the ritual is very beautiful, but I find it difficult to believe that it really has to do with God. I believe that dogma comes from man.

Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle.

When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.

No one much wants to be belittled, but we tolerate slurs surprisingly often for ourselves; for our lionised children, we demand freedom from insult.

I was kind of a scaredy-cat as a kid, and I made a very deliberate decision at some point that I was not going to let fear rule my life or determine my experience. That wasn't so easily accomplished.

Depression is the flaw in love. There's no such thing as love without the anticipation of loss. And that specter of despair can be the engine of intimacy.