There is a hurricane headed for eastern Canada, right now. Hurricane Noel. Hurricanes always die down before they reach Halifax. But I wish I were back there anyway. Even died down, it means wind and leaves and dark clouds. I haven't talked to my brother Adrian since I left home. We email back and forth on Facebook, and I showed him the final draft of my new novel, which is about him. But I haven't heard his voice in months. Now there's a hurricane coming. If I were back in Halifax now, I would fill my backpack with beer, and I would put on a warm jacket, and I would call my brother up.

The trick to finding a happy ending is knowing where to stop the story.

Anguish and fear have never been so much fun.

Call me uptight but I'm also against using the word "fag" aimed at me in some joking, campy way to demonstrate how comfortable you are with my being gay. This has happened to me. It's like a folksy gay-bashing without the exclamation point of the beatings.

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

this is not about me.
this isn't about art.
this isn't about my hobbies.
this is not about my favorite band.
this is about free flow.
this is about no restriction.
this is the torrent (or trickle) that is my mind flow.
this is what happens when you don't stop to think.

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.

Feeling about as vain and sexy as an over-the-hill, overweight, overeducated, yet under-employed, naked man with a pair of cola bottle bottoms for eyeglasses and an insignificant, no matter how erect, protrusion of flesh between the legs possibly can, I decided to write. Did I mention hairy?

"If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged."

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his left and right hand. He uses both.-St. Catherine

If he'd known how the world worked he never would have broken his heart over it.
-John Clellon Holmes,
speaking about Jack Kerouac

you will learn how to help yourself.
it will break your heart, and it will make you strong.

We lived on beer and kisses, all hopped up on love and foam.-Amy Rigby

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private citizens will occasionally kill theirs.

It isn't what the book costs. It's what it will cost you if you don't read it.

I went to bed that night in the lonely hotel room. I could not sleep, and then, in the gray light between darkness and dawn, the words came to me line by line, stanza by stanza. I lay perfectly still, and the words came sweeping on with the rhythm of marching feet, pauseless, resistless. I saw the long line swinging into place before my eyes. I heard the voice of a nation speaking through my lips.

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. -George Bernard Shaw

Frank,
I saw you speak this week at UK. You said "the children the world almost break become the adults who save it". That is my secret. Thank you for giving it voice. I did not break. I did survive and now I am a therapist working with the most disturbed, most abused, but the most incredible children. I believe they can all be saved. I believe they are all worth saving. I am trying one at a time.