Quotes from Armistead Maupin

Her Mao tse-tung t-shirt was stretched so tightly across her chest that the Chairman was grinning broadly

What are you into, anyway?" "Solitude.

Queers doing cowboy dancing. Who would've thunk it? Kids who grew up in Galveston and Tucson and Modesto, performing the folk dances of their homeland finally, finally with the partner of their choice.

The worst of times in San Francisco was still better than the best of times anywhere else. There

She lifted the book to her nose and inhaled the scent lingering in its cardboard bones: a hint of rosewater and Lysol that instantly genie-summoned the Blue Moon Lodge. It was Winnemucca condensed, this book, the only thing she owned that could still predictably take her from here to there.

My youth would be like that, the slow decay of cherished myths—about politics and race, about love itself—until nothing was left but compost from which something authentic could finally begin to grow.

Well … not exactly together. He'd buy a sofa and I'd buy a couple of matching chairs. One has to plan on divorce at all times … still, it was a landmark of sorts. I'd never gotten to the furniture-buying stage before.

A pristine landscape was perfection itself; it was only when you added people that everything changed.

Do you always make things up? Always. Why? Michael shrugged. 'I want to deceive him just enough to make him want me.' What's that from? Blanche DuBois. In Streetcar.

His name is Jed," he said. "He's in pre-law at Rice University. That's all I know, except that he's probably straight." The landlady gave him a sly smile. "That's what he told you? He's probably straight?" He laughed. "Well, he's currently in love with Bruce Springsteen, so I just assumed he was.

LIKE OTHER THINGS ABOUT HER, MARY ANN'S MENSTRUAL cycle was so regular that Mussolini might have included it on his train schedules.

There, as usual, she found her husband asleep in the flickering light of MTV. She knelt by the sofa and laid her hand gently on his chest. "Hey," she whispered. "Who's it gonna be? Me or Pat Benatar?" He stirred, rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of his forefinger. "Well?" she prodded. "I'm thinking.

The little pool was lighted now, the same glowing green-or so I imagined-as the eyes of the cats who slept in the shadows around it.

How old are you?" I hadn't been asked this in a place of business since I was seventeen, when I tried, unsuccessfully, to buy a fifth of Jack Daniel's at a liquor store across the highway from Mr. Grady's gas station. It was just as unsettling to be carded at the other end of my life, for a fucking biscuit, no less, but I answered as civilly as possible. "I'm

You don't really know for certain about a family until somebody dies. You don't know anything until that happens." She

Your hair has always been amazing. I remember those fabulous chopsticks you used to wear. Anna wore a look of amused chagrin. I'm afraid Mr. Greenleaf won't let me wear those anymore. I took a little tumble one night and almost harpooned the cat. This was very much the Anna she remembered: warm and self-mocking and complete present. And somehow that made it even harder to accept how frail she'd become since Mary Ann's last visit.

Jesus Christ, you people are complicated.

I have always preferred an occasional orgy to a nightly routine. What? Aunt Augusta said that. In Travels with My Aunt.

Who's Sally Bowles?" asked Ben. I turned and looked at my younger, less theatrical half. "She used to be married to Ansel Adams." "You're kidding?" "Yes, I am," I said. Jake

He should have made a checklist for every step of this transformational journey to radical self-expression.

The people beneath the pendulum were in their own orbits of bliss or grief, which Shawna did not want to invade. Instead she made her way upstairs, reading the inscriptions that caught her eye, moved by the sheer accumulation of loss. Grief-fiti. That's what it was.

Solitude was no excuse for sloppiness.

Tennyson. You know: 'Eating the lotus day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of' … something, something.... You get the point.

Small world, huh?" She grinned lewdly. "Not particularly. I'd say you've just run out of material.