Armistead Maupin Quotes

The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives.

If you want to know who the oppressed minorities in America are, simply look at who gets their own shelf in the bookstore. A black shelf, a women's shelf, and a gay shelf.

Being in love is the only transcendent experience.

I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short.

I know I can't tell you what it's like to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not. It's not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity.

I’m pissed off at my Republican family back in North Carolina, several of whom came to my wedding, but who went right back and are voting for homophobes and acting like it doesn’t matter. It does matter and it’s time for the queers in this country to start saying so to their families. I think we’ve all cut them too much slack for far too long.

Like I've always said, love wouldn't be blind if the braille weren't so damned much fun.

The hell of it is, I know the answer. The answer is that you never, ever, rely on another person for your peace of mind. If you do, you're screwed but good. Not right away, maybe, but sooner or later. You have to -- I don't know --you have to learn to live with yourself. You have to learn to turn back your own sheets and set a table for one without feeling pathetic. You have to be strong and confident and pleased with yourself and never give the slightest impression that you can't hack it without that certain goddamn someone. You have to fake the hell out of it.

All I know is this: If you and papa are responsible for the way I am, then I thank you with all my heart, for it is the light and the joy of my life.

I think many writers write because it's a convenient way to explain themselves to themselves. We take the chaos and the turmoil and the bullshit of our lives, and we make it into something that has a harmonious shape and sound.

Oh, Mona, we're all damned fools! Some of us just have more fun with it than others. Loosen up, dear! Don't be so afraid to cry . . . or laugh, for that matter. Laugh all you want and cry all you want and whistle at pretty men in the street and to hell with anybody who thinks you're a damned fool!

When I started writing Tales of the City I was one year away from being a mental illness. It wasn't until 1975 that the American Psychiatric Association took homosexuality off the list of mental illnesses - and in many states, including the state of North Carolina where I grew up, homosexuality was a crime. An arrestable crime. It still is, in many parts of the world.

The film itself involves a New York City radio storyteller, Gabriel Noone, who strikes up a friendship with one of his fans, an abused 14-year-old teenager who is suffering from AIDS, who does not have much longer to live.

My mother once told me that if a married couple puts a penny in a pot for every time they make love in the first year, and takes a penny out every time after that, they'll never get all the pennies out of the pot.

But I will say that the drugs are much more ferocious then they used to be. There are people wrecking their lives with addiction, which seems much more severe.

I'm not sure I even need a lover, male or female. Sometimes I think I'd settle for five good friends.

I think there are strands in all of our lives that can be seen if we step back to recognize them. Coincidence is probably as close as I'll get to having spirituality. I do see patterns in my life sometimes, and I am thrilled by what I see. I don't think I'm going to have any further shot at it after death, and I don't think there's anybody upstairs orchestrating it for me, but I do think it happens. If there are miracles in my life, they are rooted in the fact of coincidence.

Mona knocked at the wrong time. “Uh…yeah…wait a minute, Mona -- ” Mona shouted through the door. “Room service, gentlemen. Just pull the covers up.” Michael grinned at Jon. “My roommate. Brace yourself.” Seconds later, Mona burst through the doorway with a tray of coffee and croissants. “Hi! I’m Nancy Drew! You must be the Hardy Boys!

I think that instinct, that storytelling instinct, rescued me most of my life.

I had been a storyteller by instinct all my life. I was that boring little kid who made the rest of his friends sit around the campfire and listen to his ghost stories. It's been very much a part of my makeup.

I think a lot of gay people who are not dealing with their homosexuality get into right- wing politics.

Don't listen when they scoff That you are too old and I am young, For I am old enough to know better And you are young enough not to care.

Taureans are stubborn as hell. They never want to tell you what sign they are.... But underneath that tough Taurus hide beats the heart of a hopeless romantic.

I tend to prefer the shelter of fiction.

Nobody's happy. What's happy? Happiness is over when the lights come on." The older woman poured herself a glass of sangria. "Screw that," she said quietly. "What?" "Screw that. Wash your mouth out. Who taught you that half-assed existential drivel?