“When we went into the ocean, I watched his body as he dove into the waves, and it gave me a feeling in my stomach that wasn't an ache but something different.”

“You have an incredible body." He reaches out to touch my stomach. I feel no pleasure in his compliment or his touch, only impatience. This is the only feeling. I feel like the paper on which my mood chart is printed.”

“My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.”

“I couldn't get that same feeling during the day, with my hands in dirty dish water and the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the roof tops. And after a time, even at night, the feeling of God didn't last. I began to wonder what the minister meant when he said, "God, the father, sees even the smallest sparrow fall. He watches over all his children." That jumbled it all up for me. But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God. So at night, when I went to bed, I would think, "I am clean. I am sleepy." And then I went to sleep. It didn't keep me from enjoying the cleaness any less. I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.”

“Probably in time physiologists will be able to make nerves connecting the bodies of different people; this will have the advantage that we shall be able to feel another man's tooth aching.”

“I can't tell you how much it means to have Craig and my mom here tonight. Like Craig, I can feel my dad looking down on us, just as I've felt his presence in every grace-filled moment of my life. At 6-foot-6, I've often felt like Craig was looking down on me too … literally. But the truth is, both when we were kids and today, he wasn't looking down on me. He was watching over me.”

“If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything.”

“I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.”

“All night, I talked to other people. I didn't look in his direction, but I always knew where he was. I was painfully aware of him. When he was nearby, my body hummed. When he was away, there was this dull ache. With him near, I felt everything.”

“An only child alone and wild
A cabinet maker's son.
His hands were meant for different work
And his heart was known to none --
He left his home and went his lone and solitary way
And he gave to me a gift I know
I never can repay.”