" This book came from the experience I had in Bulgaria of feeling that I was in a place that was both really foreign and really familiar, and of being reminded again and again of growing up gay in Kentucky in the early nineties. But the big difference was that when I was sixteen, I found Giovanni’s Room and A Boy’s Own Story. Everything in my life had taught me that my life had no meaning, that my life had no value. Those books taught a different lesson; those books said that queer lives have value. But it was a tragic value. "

― Garth Greenwell , What Belongs to You