Josh Lanyon
I liked you the first time I saw you. You were sitting on the floor surrounded by books, and you looked up when I opened the door and smiled right at me. It felt like you had been waiting for me, like you were welcoming me home.Collection: Book
Like true philosophers I've come to believe that religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown after proper education.Collection: Believe
People loved you in the way they knew how - and often it was not the way you knew. Or needed.Collection: People
This is how God made me. You are how God made you. All God's chillun are made how God made 'em. You think God made a mistake, take it up with Him.Collection: Mistake
I don't know if real courage lies in storming barricades or simply not denying the truth.Collection: Real
I know you've all heard the advice, "Show, don't tell." The best writers don't tell you, and quite frankly they don't just show you -- they make you feel it, live it, taste it, touch it. Storytelling is about being in the moment with the characters.Collection: Character
You know that thing about Death Be Not Proud? Well, Fear Be Not Proud either. And Fear Be Not Elegant. What Fear be is stumbling, bumbling flight, crashing through brush, slip-sliding on pine needles, sloshing through puddles that are always deeper than you expect.Collection: Fear
All cynics are disappointed idealists. The more stars in the eyes, the harder the fall.Collection: Stars
He looked okay. No, to be honest. He looked a lot better than okay. He looked...fine. Fine, as in get the Chiffons over here to sing a chorus.Collection: Honest
Rachel delivered it like an official pronouncement. Like she was one of the fairies gifting Sleeping Beauty's christening: Beauty. Intelligence. Heterosexual.Collection: Sleep
To find them all in one package...well, perhaps better not to dwell on his package in my fragile state.Collection: States
Hearts got broken every day. Nobody died from that. But it did kind of fade the sunlight and drain the color from the days.Collection: Heart
You got a little bit of an attitude, Mr. English, if you don't mind my saying so. I don't mind.Collection: Attitude
We were locked onto each other as though we had just discovered this incredible thing you could do with two mouths pressing close and moist against each other. And the taste of him... Horrifyingly, unbearably sweet -- sweet in the way crack must feel hitting the bloodstream of an addict after years of staying clean.Collection: Sweet
Do you still do the clubs?” Jake shakes his head. “You do the clubs because you can’t find what you need at home. I’ve got everything I need. I’ve got the answer to needs I didn’t even know I had.Collection: Home
I know that asshole you were with in college --” “Can we leave that asshole out of it?” Please, gentlemen, one asshole at a time.Collection: College
Jake's mouth found mine, his lips molding hot and soft to my own. His tongue tentatively tested the seal of my lips; I parted them and he pushed inside. It was startlingly sweet and achingly familiar, like finding harbor.Collection: Sweet
The problem with a life spent reading is you know too much.Collection: Witty
I hadn't liked him at first. He did sort of grow on you after a while. Like the cosmopolitans. Or maybe because of the cosmopolitans.Collection: Firsts
He never lied to me. I just didn't ask the questions I didn't want to know the answers to.Collection: Answers
You don't look so hot, Adrien." "Yeah, well I'm having a bad heart day." His upper lip curled in a semblance of a smile. "Tell me about it.Collection: Heart
I dug out the powder blue cashmere cardigan my mother Lisa gave me the Christmas before last, pulled on my oldest, softest Levi’s. Comfort clothes; the next best thing to a hug from a warm, living body. Lately there had been a shortage of hugs in my life. Lately there had been a shortage of warm, living bodies.Collection: Mother
The phone rang, picked up, and the same male voice announced, “Chris Powers." "Hey there, Chris. Are you aware it's a felony to make threats over the phone?" To give Powers his fair due, he got over his shock within a split second. “Try it, asshole. I dare you. My lawyers will have you for lunch.” He clicked off again. I did what any red-blooded American male would do. I called my big, ex-cop ex-boyfriend.Collection: Ex Boyfriend
Peter is ... adjusting. He's back in school, and he's doing quite well. I wish you could find it in your heart to forgive him." "I've got this funny resentful streak about people who try to kill me.Collection: Heart
He shifted over without comment, lifting the blankets, and I scrambled into the warm sheets beside him. He smelled like soap and sleep and bare skin. He smelled familiar. Not the deja vu familiar of Guy or Mel. Familiar like...the ache in your chest of homesickness, of longing for harbor after weeks of rough seas or craving a fire's warmth after snow--or wanting back something you should never have given away.Collection: Sleep
And yet there was something about his strength, his arrogance, his sheer size that got under my skin. He probably couldn't even spell vanilla. He was probably selfish in the sack. Probably selfish and greedy and...unsophisticated. And hung like a horse.Collection: Horse
Hey, its not much of a closet is it?" "No. Its not. I don't like closets. Life's to short to spend hiding in the dark.Collection: Dark
When you live with a potentially life-threatening condition you get used to the thought of dying. You accept it, you push on. The thing that scared me was the picture of dying slowly and painfully, the loss of independence and identity to illness.Collection: Fear
Everything a gay man does makes a political statement. Everything matters: where you bank, where you shop, where you eat. When you hold your lover’s hand in publicCollection: Gay
You're kind of a smart ass when you're not flat on your face.Collection: Smart
I thought of the words of the Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne. "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.Collection: Valentines Day
I think it was Mark Twain who said, “Get your facts straight, and then you can distort them as much as you like.Collection: Thinking
Cops before breakfast.Before coffee even. As if Mondays weren't bad enough.Collection: Monday
The battle rages eternal, though the race, religion, gender or sexual orientation of those discriminated against changes regularly. Maybe man’s need for a scapegoat is genetically programmed into him.Collection: Men
How did people get over this? They obviously did. Every day someone fell in love with the wrong person and had to pack up all their fragile, misguided hopes and unwanted affection, and move on to the next picnic table.Collection: Moving
The only thing worse than opera is someone who hums along with opera.Collection: Opera
He needed fresh air and sunshine. A walk in the woods and afterward a good book to read by the fire. Yeah, that was the life.Collection: Book
I want people to react to my work, to think, to question, to challenge, to cry and laugh and feel.Collection: Thinking
I'm not insane. This is very simple, very straightforward. Provided he doesn't kill me, its foolproof.Collection: Simple
Kevin refilled my plastic cup with more box wine. I smiled thanks. Kevin smiled welcome. Jake kicked my ankle.Collection: Wine
Knowing and believing are two different things.Collection: Believe
You were the first in every way that counted.Collection: Way
I’m never wrong? Who besides Republican presidents and evil masterminds can say that with a straight face?Collection: Evil
'What about stress? Are you using your stress-management techniques when things seem to be getting on top of you?' 'Nothing is getting on top of me.' As I said it, a totally inappropriate picture popped into my mind. 'What are you feeling?' Jake's breath warm against my face, my bruised lips tingling from his kisses. 'Tell me what it feels like with me inside you.'Collection: Stress
Anyone who wasn't half-stoned on pain meds would have instantly realized what a really bad idea this plan was, but since that didn't include me, I didn't worry about it.Collection: Pain
Then, like a born and bred asshole, he added to the sheriff, "He writes murder mysteries.Collection: Writing
I never meant to get involved with you, Adrien. Rest easy; you're not.Collection: Easy
...Jake, a homosexual cop buried so deep in the closet he didn't know where to look for himself.Collection: Jake
Tiffs among the faggots were apparently the stuff of quiet merriment.Collection: Stuff
Focus on someone else’s problems for a change, I instructed myself. You need the practice. From now on you’ll have to live in a world you didn’t make up. Horrible thought.Collection: Practice