"If your belief on SSM is based on a learned disgust at the thought of a gay person, the moment a gay person, any gay person, ceases to disgust you, you have nothing left."

"People point their fingers at young blacks, call them thugs and say they need to pull up their pants. That's fine, but you're not feeding them any knowledge. You're not giving them a vision. All you're saying is be a square like me."

"Having once supervised an 80-member news division of a major metropolitan newspaper, the first weeks on my new job triggered a self-esteem meltdown. Flygirl, a supervisor half my age with a high school diploma, critiqued my shirt folding."

"Auden heard that an old woman in the congregation was suffering night terrors, so he took a blanket and slept in the hallway outside her apartment until she felt safe again."

"He throws bombs into the gay community, and his editors call the explosion a debate."

"Was it inferior black culture that had blacks at 55 percent poverty in 1959?"

"I am afraid she would see my offer of help as an attack on her ability to handle this alone with him in whatever way they chose. I think about stopping the car, but I’m afraid if I do I will never start it again."

"At the end of their meeting, the dean of women looked at Whitney and said that she was a 'dirty vessel, and God can’t use a dirty vessel. He is done with you.'"

"'Is Bruno Mars a person or a band?' asked somebody as halftime approached. 'It’s the reverse Jethro Tull,' someone else answered, thinking that clarified things. It felt like college."

"Do not allow yourself to believe for even one second that there are not deeply classist, capitalist reasons Sherlock abounds in this day and age of ours, while Columbo does not... Real Marxists love Columbo."