"I'd been too honest, straightforward where I should have embellished, ordinary where I should have been fanciful."
In this passage, Elaine is considering her recent rejection from Stanford, trying to work out why she wasn't accepted into the prestigious university. She concludes that her application wasn't interesting enough, and she didn't draw attention to her individuality.
“As much as I concealed from my parents... I needed them to be there to hide from. Worse than any rejection would be their absence from my life.”
In "The Responsibility of Deceit," Calvin deliberately hides his sexuality from his parents, due to a fear of losing them. Here, he explains that although he has been "deceitful", as he has lied to his parents, he feels that this is necessary in order to keep them in his life.
"Biology was fate. If being gay was a trait like eye or hair color, then ancestor after ancestor had passed this inheritance down to me. It couldn't be helped. I could accept who I was if I had no say in the matter, and in this way I hoped my parents would understand, all of us released from responsibility."
In this passage, Calvin considers his sexuality. He says that being gay is something that a person is born with, and therefore he is not "responsible" for it. As such, he reasons that his parents have no logical grounds for blaming him for it and disowning him as a result.
