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“I wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn’t matter. But I knew it did matter. It mattered to Dante. And, anyway, it didn’t do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. That’s the way he was.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“My dad picked me up and rocked me in the chair. I felt small and weak and I wanted to hold him back but I couldn’t because there wasn’t any strength in my arms, and I wanted to ask him if he had held me like this when I was a boy because I didn’t remember and why didn’t I remember. I started to think that maybe I was still dreaming, but my mother was changing the sheets on my bed so I knew that everything was real. Except me. I think I was mumbling. My father held me tighter and whispered something, but not even his arms or his whispers could keep me from trembling. My mom dried my sweaty body with a towel and she and my dad changed me into a clean T-shirt and clean underwear. And then I said the strangest thing, “Don’t throw my T-shirt away. Dad gave it to me.�� I knew I was crying, but I didn’t know why because I wasn’t the kind of guy who cried, and I thought that maybe it was someone else who was crying.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Telling Mom was one thing. Telling Dad is another.
He’s in the living room smoking and watching what he claims is a very important Yankees game. It’s in the ninth inning and the teams are tied. I consider backing out, maybe waiting another week or so, but maybe he won’t actually care when I tell him. Maybe all that stuff he said when I was younger, about never acting like a girl or playing with any female action figures, will go away once he realizes I am the way I am without any choice. Maybe he’ll accept me.
Mom follows me into the living room and sits down on Eric’s bed. “Mark, do you have a minute? Aaron has something he wants to talk about.��
He exhales cigarette smoke. “I’m listening.�� He never looks away from the game.”
― Adam Silvera, More Happy Than Not

“there were about a thousand things I liked better than this part, in which we talked about women like they were just things. I tried to imagine what it would be like if gay were normal and all of us were gay. Would we objectify men in the same way? My”
― Bill Konigsberg, Openly Straight