Bill Hayes Quotes

To be a New Yorker is to be away from the city and feel like you are missing something

But if pressed, I'd have to say that what I love most about the subways of New York is what they do not do. One may spend a lifetime looking back - whether regretfully or wistfully, with shame or fondness or sorrow - and thinking how, given the chance, things might have been done differently. But when you enter a subway car and the doors close, you have no choice but to give yourself over to where it is headed. The subway only goes one way: forward.

I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life." Oliver Sacks

I learned that not only had he never been in a relationship, he had also never came out publicly as a gay man. But in a way, he'd had no reason to do so- he hadn't had sex in three-and-a-half decades, he told me. At first, I did not believe him; such a monk like existence- devoted solely to work, reading, writing, thinking- seemed at once awe-inspiring and inconceivable. He was without a doubt the most unusual person I had ever known, and before long I found myself not just falling in love with O; it was something more, something I had never experienced before. I adored him.

I've come to believe that a good cry is like a car wash for the soul

I have come to believe that kindness is repaid in unexpected ways and that if you are lonely or bone-tired or blue, you need only come down from your perch and step outside. New York - which is to say, New Yorkers - will take care of you.

10-16-13
I, soaking in the bath, O on the toilet, talking, talking about what he's been thinking and writing- short personal pieces, a memoir perhaps. He had brought with him two pillows to sit on and a very large red apple. He opens his mouth wide and takes a gigantic bite. I watch him chewing for quite a while. After he finishes, 'Bite me off a piece', I say. He does so, dislodges the apple from his mouth, and puts the piece in my mouth. We keep talking. I add more hot water. Every other bite, he gives to me.
There is a quiet moment, and then, seemingly apropos of nothing, O says: 'I am glad to be on planet Earth with you. It would be so much lonelier otherwise.'
I reach for his hand and hold it,
'I, too,' I say.

O: 'Are you conscious of your thoughts before language embodies them?

I cannot take a subway without marveling at the lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two, testing us for kindness and compatibility. Is that not what civility is?

O: 'The most we can do is to write - intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively - about what it is like living in the world at this time

I've suddenly realized what you mean to me: You create the need which you fill, the hunger you sate.