More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
By his forties, all he has managed to grow is a gentle sense of himself, akin to the transparent carapace of a soft-shelled crab.
But once you’ve actually been in love, you can’t live with “will do”; it’s worse than living with yourself.
Tricky, tricky, this life.
It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can still do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.
In a panic, Less’s mind races to put this man before a series of backgrounds—blue sky and beach, tall tree and river, lobster and wineglass, disco ball and drugs, bedsheets and sunrise—but nothing is coming to mind.
this.book.is.hilarious.
Either Less is an asshole, or the heart is a capricious thing. It is not impossible both are true.
Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these.
Strange, though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.
Did you love it, the rain dance every day? Only when it rained.
The tragicomic business of being alive is getting to him.
He ends his workout lacquered in sweat, feeling he has beat back another day from time’s assault.
His brain sits before its cash register again, charging him for old shames as if he has not paid before.
“It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world. The gay world. But in your books, you make the characters suffer without reward. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were Republican.
painfully relevent
“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.” “Yes! It’s like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won’t ever be back.”
he is probably the type to turn and look at you while he is driving.
You are the most absurd person I’ve ever met. You’ve bumbled through every moment and been a fool; you’ve misunderstood and misspoken and tripped over absolutely everything and everyone in your path, and you’ve won. And you don’t even realize it.”
Look at him, look at him. How could I not love him?
