Dan Skinner > Dan's Quotes

“I only saw glimpses of the real world around me. Reality dissolved beneath the press of his lips against mine. I lost myself. In that moment there was We...
He enveloped me. I felt his strength. He seemed gigantic to me. And yet gentle. His breath was inside me. I tasted what he tasted like. All the scents of that instant cascaded upon me. His sweet. The roses. The nectar of the feeders. The wood that hat hammered into with nails. The sweet raspberries on his mouth.”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“That kiss was bigger than my dreams." The words found their way to my ear, softly.
I had no doubt that magic did exist in our world. It wasn't with wands and wizards. It resisted in plain humans like me and Ryan. In finding a pathway from one heart into another's. Our bridge was a kiss. It appeared from nowhere with the simplest of spells. Three words.”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“It's hard t want to fit in and not be able to," his voice came barely above a whisper. "They make us feel like it's easier to lie than be truthful. Easier to hide than be seen. Make us feel like we did something wrong to not be like them. Like we made a conscious choice".”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“Which choice do you think is easier? One that comes with a threat? Or one that comes from love?”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“I wanted to tell everyone I was in love. I wanted to tell them how I felt. I wanted to scream if off the porch to complete strangers. It was a feeling that didn't want to be contained in the small privacy of my mind. Of course, I knew there would be no telling anyone. I'd heard the word so many times. But I'd never contemplated its meaning.
Love.
It hat explained itself to me. I was swept away by what it really meant. It was a word used to convey what had no language. It was a word used to explain a million things that couldn't be explained. It simplified what the heart could not.”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“Being gay has existed as long as history has been recorded. Back to the Greeks. How can something be called an aberration if it's existed as long as the Parthenon? Hell, gays existed before Christ did, and they accept him being legitimate even with all his walking on water and God-screwed-my-mom-who-was-married-to-another-man-nonsence." (Rosemary)”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“I know this sounds ridiculous," he spoke solemnly, lacing his fingers in my hair. "But sometimes I feel like I'm caught in your gravity. And no matter where I am, anywhere in the world, if I wrote 'I love you' on a note, and made a paper airplane, and threw it into the breeze...it would still find you. My words couldn't escape you, any more than I can." (Ryan)”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“It was hard to tell if he was lying, or really believed his own bullshit. “We’re good for each other. You give me what I need. I give you what you need. No one needs to know what that is because it’s a secret between us. So we put on our suit. That’s the investment: us.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“There’s no doubt that Dick and I were in a relationship. It was one completely contrary to anything one would consider normal.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“I’d never blame anyone else who falls for the same brand of seduction. I embrace that we’re all similarly flawed. That makes the self-inflicted wounds hurt less. I’d read Tennessee Williams. I just didn’t expect to be living my own tainted little version of Suddenly Last Summer.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“If you are inherently a good guy, which I think I am, you instinctively want to help people even before you know what their problem may be. Which, as I examine that notion, makes good guys sound gullible. Con artists look for good guys because of that built-in gullibility. If they're con artists that come in a sexually alluring package, a good guy can become a brainless idiot. Allow me to introduce myself.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“A few days later she sent him a two page, single-spaced, typewritten letter preaching to him about the Catholic stand on premarital sex, and especially condemning the use of that horrendous tool of the devil, the seed-killing prophylactic. Don't worry. Those facetious words weren't hers. I paraphrased. This boy was more browbeaten by mommy than Norman Bates.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“How did he close off that part of his brain that tells someone they've harmed another soul?...Most frighteningly of all, are some of us born with no conscience at all?”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“I sensed more than recognized the sound of those skeletal knuckles on the door. I was too young for it to be Death, so it had to be his mother.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“"You can't dream in the light, if you can't live in it."”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“Call me crazy, but I think sex is the absolute most intimate thing you can share with someone. You're making yourself naked and vulnerable to another human being. It should be an act of sharing with someone you know and have feelings for. You're giving a part of yourself to them, and they're giving a part of themselves to you. It doesn't get any more intimate than that. It's not just an act." (Ryan)”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“I wanted to absorb every moment of this night. I knew it was special. I wanted to keep it locked away inside me forever just the way it was. When I closed my eyes to sleep, I thought of how he'd glowed like a jewel in the light of the campfire. The way the flames carved him against the darkness. The very shape of his head. The smudges of chocolate and marshmallows on his fingers and lips. How the hair on his legs looked like filaments of gold. When I was certain my heart hat painted the canvas in my memory...I fell asleep.”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“I’ve always been a very private individual. For a lot of reasons. But mainly one. The man I lived with for all that time. The monster in the closet who I protected.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“I tried to turn my mind off. Shut down the thoughts that were with me every second. Everything in me ached to be with him. It was worse than an obsession. It was a need.”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“I think the whole world should be naked, so no one could try to pretend to be something other than they are." (Ryan)”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“Love doesn't happen because you find the right bricks and cement to build it. Love really is...pure magic. It comes from" - she gestured toward the heavens - "out there. And if falls like pixie dust where it wants. And when id does...you can fly."
(Rosemary)”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“I want that, when I'm in my fifties and I look back to my first kiss, I think, Wow! I want to remember it as being amazing. That it's one of the most special moments of my life. I want to remember the person I share that with to be important to me. Not just someone who happened along at the right time. It's not just and act of the body. It's an act of the heart." (Ryan)”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“But love of one kind will never duplicate itself. Love has its variety...which possibly makes it as a great as all the songs and stories and poems.”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“No matter how this turns out, you've already seen the treasure we all search a lifetime for. You've got the whole rest of your life to be grateful for that.”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You

“I was now privy to how a calm, average , peace-loving individual can suddenly get infected with a special kind of crazy. Higher reasoning is replaced with killer animal instincts.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“Men have sacrificed so much for their beliefs. Country. Kings. Queens. Political systems. God. Love . It doesn’t seem very noble to simply let something you believe in, someone you love, just walk away. To give up without a fight.”
― Dan Skinner, The Bible Boys

“He wasn't just coming. He was serving full course meals.”
― Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Rama II

“It's only human to think about the the 'what might have beens'. But it doesn't change what really is. And if we get lost in things that aren't, we lose sight of what's right in front of us.”
― Dan Skinner, Memorizing You