„Tom Atkins and I had grown up at a time when we were full of self-hatred for our sexual differences, because we´d had it drummed into our heads that those differences were wrong. In retrospect, I´m ashamed that my expressed hope for Peter Atkins was that he wouldn´t be like Tom – or like me. Maybe, for Peter´s generation, what I should have hoped for him was that he would be „like us“ – only proud of it.“

John Irving: In one Person