Background photo: (c) Sandralise / www.fotosearch.com
“Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and good things will be yours.” –Swedish Proverb
From a gay dad’s blog post response to Kathryn Skaggs, a grandmother and California pro-proposition 8 activist who thought the movie Frozen was targeting children with a “gay agenda.”
“Yes, Ms. Skaggs. The movie had a hidden message. It had a message of love, and hope. It had the desire to melt the closed heart and inspire it to let go, and love other people. It wants the target of its message to warm from within and to accept others as they are, and give them the freedom to live their best and fullest lives. What you got wrong is this: that message was not targeted at your grand kids. It was meant for you.” –robw77
(c) javarman / www.fotosearch.com Stock Photography
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” ― Maya Angelou
…
“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.” ― Maya Angelou
…
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou
Here are some of my favorite lines from I SWEAR TO YOU:
Quote 1:
There was just something about Mateo, something about watching him pleasure himself that got Grady hot and bothered. It fed a primal instinct in him that no amount of fucking girls had done for him.
Quote 2:
Grady seized him by the arm and spun him around. “Teo, it doesn’t have to mean anything. So we like jerking off together? It doesn’t mean we’re— It doesn’t mean anything.”
Mateo snorted out a bitter laugh and shook his head. “It means everything.”
Quote 3:
He took Grady’s silence as the affirmation it was. He threw his arms up in the air. “How in the hell did I get all the brains in this family? What kind of asshole tells his parents he’s gay, announces it on Facebook for everyone to see, and he doesn’t even know if he likes to suck dick?”
Quote 4:
“Did you know about yourself right away after we… After we were here last time?”
Mateo took a swig of the beer as if he had to think before speaking, or work up the courage to share something so personal. “There was no going back for me after that weekend.”
Quote 5:
“I’ve missed you too, Teo. More than I can say.” Only he was saying. He’d been trying to say everything that he could think of, more than he’d ever thought he would express to anyone.
They both moved at the same time and met halfway. This kiss was less about passion and more about saying what words weren’t enough for.
Quote 6:
They didn’t speak. Grady let his lips and hands say all he could to him, and Mateo seemed to be doing the same.
Grady wanted to believe he was reading the unspoken words correctly. That Mateo had forgiven him, that this was just the beginning.
Quote 7:
Eventually they stilled, Mateo’s head on Grady’s chest as he said, “No one’s touched me like that in a long time.” He shook his head. “No one’s ever touched me like that.”
Quote 8:
He gave him a long look. It was loyalty and devotion and maybe something more all rolled into one. “I had to make sure that if you ever figured things out and wanted to try again, I could be with you and not put you in danger.”
Quote 9:
Mateo faced the water once more. “Can we stay here for a little while longer?”
“Sure. However long you want.”
Without looking Grady’s way, he asked, “How about forever?” Then he turned to him again, and for the first time since they’d gotten to the lake, those dark eyes had a peaceful serenity to them. “Does forever work for you?”
“The process of writing books is somewhat akin to a very long police interrogation in which the detective leans over the table littered with the butt ends of cigarettes and cold coffee in Styrofoam cups and says for the 87th time, “Now let’s go over this again.” It is a study in repetition, the ability to read the same page, paragraph, sentence until it could be recited backward and in French in hopes of figuring out which detail is missing, which idea is false. What my days lack in being touched by the muse they make up for in the steady picking of the miner’s ax, chipping out a tunnel that may well lead to nowhere.”
Yeah, it’s like that…
But it all culminates in that moment when I read a scene and I’m on the edge of my seat, waiting for what happens next–and I KNOW what happens. That’s when I know I did the very best I could, and the book is ready to be shared with others.
