Louis Muñoz

“What had it been like for those boys, that transitional generation? Lying in bed, whispering secrets with a best friend, holding hands, kissing cheeks, age-old patterns of friendship that no longer seemed quite so innocent… ​Why hadn’t they fought harder to keep it? ​Why had it been taken away at all?”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“As with so many of my books, The Sleeping Soldier grew from an observation in George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. Chauncey notes that when historians discuss passionate male friendship in 19th century America, they often “mistake the fact that men who passionately and physically expressed their love for other men were considered normal for their having been considered heterosexual, as if it were not the very inconsistency of their emotional lives with contemporary models of heterosexuality that made them seem curious to historians in the first place.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“Always denied, never expressed, but impossible to ignore, the thought he was different to normal men plagued his mind when he allowed it to, and although he kept the thought as deeply covered as he could, it rose to the surface in moments such as the one that had just passed.”
― Jackson Marsh, Finding a Way

“Of course you sing different songs than we did, you have a different president, you dress in different fashions. I knew these things would change. But I would have thought feelings were feelings and always the same, and it turns out they are as changeable as popular songs. Maybe that is why the songs change,” Russell said. “Each generation needs its own songs, because each generation has a different heart.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier