Quotes from Armistead Maupin

I'm tired of it. I'm sick of picking up the pieces and marching bravely onward. I want things to work out just once.

The landlady was a fiftyish woman in a plum-colored kimono.

It was a well-weathered, three-story structure made of brown shingles. It made Mary Ann think of an old bear with bits of foliage caught in its fur. She liked it instantly.

Don't change the subject while I'm quoting Tennyson.

The line, Lasko. Do you know anyone in San Francisco? Are you just gonna get off the train and take a streetcar to the swimming pool?" "I might. I could." "You have to have a plan, Lasko." "No, I don't. Not after this. I don't have to have a plan in the world.

Mary Ann was shaken until she noticed that the landlady was smiling. "You'll get used to my babbling," said Mrs. Madrigal. "All the others have." She walked to the window, where the wind made her kimono flutter like brilliant plumage.

When Connie rounded the corner several seconds later, she found her friend standing glumly by herself, squeezing a roll of Charmin.

A little number?" "Fucked." "Thank you.

The rules of a well-ordered life were never enough when other people refused to obey them.

A half-hour conversation with Binky was like eating a Whitman Sampler in one sitting.

And I'd like Ben there, of course, cuddling me into the void with the usual sweet assurances.

Mary Ann did not know. She avoided the issue by ordering a turkey sandwich and a bean salad. Mona ordered another Pimm's Cup.

Life goes on, sport.

One was a fiftyish, red-bearded North Beach poet named Joaquin Schwartz. ("A dear man," Mrs. Madrigal confided to Mary Ann, "but I wish he'd learn to use capital letters.")

Joaquin and Laurel spent dinner discussing their favorite years. Joaquin believed in 1957. Laurel felt 1967 was where it was at … or where it had been at.

footnotes to a feeling

RUBY MILLER'S HOUSE WAS ON ORTEGA STREET IN THE Sunset district, a green stucco bungalow with a manicured lawn and a bowl of plastic roses in the picture window.

She was Anna Madrigal, a self-made woman, and there was no one else in the world exactly like her.

Mmm," he said vaguely, trying to sound polite but disinterested.

If she ever had a child, she would want him to grow up in San Francisco, where Mardi Gras was celebrated at least five times a year.

I couldn't write—or wouldn't write, at any rate—unable to face the grueling self-scrutiny that fiction demands

MARY ANN SINGLETON WAS TWENTY-FIVE YEARS old when she saw San Francisco for the first time. She came to the city alone for an eight-day vacation. On the fifth night, she drank three Irish coffees at the Buena Vista, realized that her Mood Ring was blue, and decided to phone her mother in Cleveland.

When it was over, Mary Ann left the bar and walked through Aquatic Park to the bay. She stood there for several minutes in a chill wind, staring at the beacon on Alcatraz. She made a vow not to think about her mother for a while.

SAGEBRUSH AND AVOCADO TREES SHIMMERED IN THE afternoon heat as the huge gold limousine sped north through the hills of Escondido.