Armistead Maupin Quotes & Sayings

I don't see myself very clearly.
Then look at the people who love you ... Look into their eyes and see what they're seeing; that's all you need to know yourself. — Armistead Maupin

Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility. It has shown me limitless possibilities of living. It has given me people whose passion and kindness and sensitivity have provided a constant source of strength. It has brought me into the family of man, Mama, and I like it here. — Armistead Maupin

transcendental volleyball — Armistead Maupin

Being in love is the only transcendent experience. — Armistead Maupin

The hostess extended her swanlike neck and opened her mouth to the fullest. "Aaaahhhaaaahhhhheeeeaaaahhhh!"
Somewhere in the depths of the pine forest an identical sound reverberated.
"An echo!" exclaimed Frannie.
"No," smiled Helena. "Sybil Manigault. She's into nature. — Armistead Maupin

Her apartment seemed fussier than ever, as if the doilies and tassels had taken to breeding in their unguarded moments. — Armistead Maupin

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

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. — Armistead Maupin

It was like school spirit back in high school. He didn't have it then, and he didn't have it now. To him, the biggest advantage of being queer was being queer. — Armistead Maupin

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

I know that when Terry and I were together, 10 years ago, he did not appreciate it when people would ask him what it is like being partnered with a celebrity. Precisely because it suggested that he had no value. — Armistead Maupin

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

It's time to get mad, Michael. Niceness doesn't count for shit! — Armistead Maupin

I haven't lost faith in human nature and I haven't decided to be less compassionate to strangers. — Armistead Maupin

Mona ... lots of things are more binding than sex. They last longer too. — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

Down the Peninsula at Cypress Lawn Cemetery, a woman in a paisley turban climbed out of a battered automobile and trudged up the hillside to a new grave.
She stood there for a moment, humming to herself, then removed a joint from a tortoise-shell cigarette case and laid it gently on the grave.
"Have fun," she smiled. "It's Colombian. — Armistead Maupin

It took so long to find you ... and now I don't want it to change. I want it all set in amber. I want us and nobody else in the most selfish way you can imagine. I can't help it
I'm old-fashioned. I believe marriage is between a man and a man. — Armistead Maupin

THERE WERE MORNINGS WHEN VINCENT FELT LIKE THE last hippie in the world. The Last Hippie. The phrase assumed a kind of tragic grandeur as he stood in the bathroom of his Oak Street flat, fluffing his amber mane to conceal his missing ear. If — Armistead Maupin

For the most part, I have a very manageable celebrity. People recognize me from time to time, and they usually say very appreciative things. It affords me a great deal of pleasure. — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

Such a suitable word, stroke. I'd heard it since childhood without fully understanding its meaning, but it sounded, even through a haze of sleep and dope, just like itself: abrupt and brutal and irreversible. A stroke of lightning, the stroke of midnight, the stroke of a pen. — Armistead Maupin

I have always distrusted memoir. I tend to write my memoirs through my fiction. It's easier to get to the truth by not claiming that you are speaking it. Some things can be said in fiction that can never be said in memoir. — Armistead Maupin

Needing and loving are two different things. — Armistead Maupin

Things speed up as you circle the drain.
Armistead Maupin on ageing — Armistead Maupin

Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that I was a complete Hitchcock fanatic from age 9. — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

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

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. — Armistead Maupin

I believe very firmly that gay people of every stripe and age should be role models for all children, and that means interacting with them. — Armistead Maupin

Outing is a nasty word for telling the truth. — Armistead Maupin

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

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

But it's amazing how many people think that gay men should slink off into the shadows when it comes to having friendships with children. — Armistead Maupin

Somepeople drink to foregt, I smoke to remember Anna Madrigal in Tales of the City ... — Armistead Maupin

How could I possibly NOT be disappointed by what I would find? Nothing had ever met my expectation, since nothing could compete with my doctoring imagination, my pathetic compulsion to make the world quanter, funnier, kinder, and more mysterious than it actually was. — Armistead Maupin

Uh ... you know, strict." "With occasional lapses into lacto and ovo, huh?" "Yes. Except on weekends and nights when I'm stoned. Then I'm a steako-lacto-ovo ... or maybe a porkchopo-lacto-ovo ... — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory: some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth. — Armistead Maupin

The earth knows exactly how to hold us if we just let it. — Armistead Maupin

You cannot be loved by someone who doesn't want to know you. — Armistead Maupin

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! — Armistead Maupin

It makes more sense if you've lived it." A — Armistead Maupin

Well ... everything gets old after a while. I personally get a little sick of wrecking my liver at The Lion for the privilege of tricking with some guy whose lover is in L.A. for the weekend. — Armistead Maupin

My life is full of love; I designed it that way. I try to make my own experience about love and I look for kindness in others. That's the thing I value the most: it will get you through everything. — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

Jesus Christ, you people are complicated. — Armistead Maupin

If I had my way ... We would lock ourselves away from that madness out there ... — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

Then they would both dissolve in giggles, bowing in their mirth to the awful hopelessness of it all. — Armistead Maupin

It occurred to Michael that this was the great perk of being loved: someone to wait for you, someone to tell you that it will get easier up ahead. Even when it might not be true. — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

I've always drawn on bits and pieces of my own life. — Armistead Maupin

It may interest you to know that my breakup with Terry and this mystery did not happen concurrently in real life. That is a writer's device, which places Gabriel under even greater pressure when the mystery begins to reveal itself. — Armistead Maupin

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! — Armistead Maupin

We're gonna be ... I mean people like you and me ... we're gonna be fifty-year-old libertines in a world full of twenty-year-old Calvinists. — Armistead Maupin

Umbed by disappointment and betrayal, like a child who had been awakened suddenly from a summer dream about christmas morning. — Armistead Maupin

Thack seemed to sort something out for a moment.
"Sometimes I watch him when he's playing with Harry or digging in the yard. And I think: This is it, this is the guy I've waited for all my life. Then this other voice tells me not to get used to it, that it'll only hurt more later. It's funny. You're feeling this enormous good fortune and waiting for it to be over at the same time."
"You seem happy," Brian ventured.
"I am."
"Well ... that's a lot. I envy you that."
Thack shrugged. "All we've got is now, I guess. But that's all anybody gets. If we wasted that time being scared ... "
"Absolutely. — Armistead Maupin

Could you conjugate that? To sleaze. I sleaze. You sleaze. We all have sleazen. — Armistead Maupin

It all goes so fast, she thought. We dole out our lives in dinner parties and plane flights, and it's over before we know it. We lose everyone we love, if they don't lose us first, and every single thing we do is intended to distract us from that reality. — Armistead Maupin

I've included these little jokes and mysteries in my writing for the amusement of readers. — Armistead Maupin

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

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. — Armistead Maupin

I felt very close to God ... My friends say that's because I was always on my knees. — Armistead Maupin

I consider myself much better adjusted than Gabriel. — Armistead Maupin

In her opinion, the parrots were annoying arrogant. You could buy the most beautiful one in town, she observed, but that won't make it love you. You could feed it, care for it and exclaim over its loveliness, but there was nothing to guarantee that it would stay home with you. There had to be a lesson in there somewhere. — Armistead Maupin

In a burst of hideous insight, DeDe realized the depth of her commitment to this marriage. She had just traded adultery for a cheeseburger and an order of french fries. — Armistead Maupin

Men and women, both straight and gay, who don't consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being. These aren't radicals or weirdos, Mama. They are shop clerks and bankers and little old ladies and people who nod and smile to you when you meet them on the bus. Their attitude is neither patronizing nor pitying. And their message is so simple: Yes, you are a person. Yes, I like you. Yes, it's all right for you to like me too. — Armistead Maupin

Too much of a good thing is wonderful. — Armistead Maupin

Still, I gave her a call, wondering if she might have lost someone herself, but our talk was limited to the surreal events we'd just watched on television. A crisis does draw people together, but rarely for the right reason. The old wounds flare up again soon enough; the bond lasts no longer than the terror. — Armistead Maupin

I can't imagine a more fulfilling thing for a writer than that you've made a strong impact on the lives of other people. Just because I've heard it before does not mean I don't want to hear it one more time. — Armistead Maupin

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

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

The bay was bright blue today, the hard fierce blue of a gas flame. If there was fog rolling in - and there must be, given the insistence of those horns - she couldn't see it from here. — Armistead Maupin

Michael's generation - its history of fighting disease and bigotry - sometimes made him grumpier than Ben would like him to be, but he knew what he'd found in Michael: a gift for intimacy like none Ben had ever known. — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

Life goes on, sport. — Armistead Maupin

She told me about the cop. And the movie star, and the construction worker. You're not having a life Michael, you're fucking the Village People one at a time — Armistead Maupin

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

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. — Armistead Maupin

I'm the age now that Rock was when he picked me up, so I can understand how he felt - how his fame limited his freedom. You get kinder as you go along. — Armistead Maupin

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? — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

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

When I get back from this book tour, I'm planning to learn the internet. Maybe I can hook up in cyberspace. — Armistead Maupin

But I'm acutely aware that the possibility of fraud is even more prevalent in today's world because of the Internet and cell phones and the opportunity for instant communication with strangers. — Armistead Maupin

What about San Francisco?"
"What about it?"
"Did you like it?"
She shrugged. "It was O.K."
"Just O.K.?"
She laughed. "Good God!"
"What?"
"You're all alike here."
"How so?" he asked.
"You demand adoration for the place. You're not happy until everybody swears undying love for every nook and cranny of every precious damn
"
"Whoa, missy."
"Well, it's true. Can't you just worship it on your own? Do I have to sign an affadavit?"
He chuckled. "We're that bad, are we?"
"You bet your ass you are. — Armistead Maupin

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. — Armistead Maupin

Actions have consequences. In actions have them. We set things in motion by what we don't do. — Armistead Maupin

Over the next eight years, almost without noticing, I arrived at a quiet revelation. You could make a home by yourself. You could fill that home with friends and friendly strangers without someone sleeping next to you. You could tend your garden and cook your meals and find predictable pleasure in your own autonomy. — Armistead Maupin

I tend to prefer the shelter of fiction. — Armistead Maupin

Hey, you look at your tits; I'll look at mine! (Michael Tolliver, Tales of the City) — Armistead Maupin

If you're going to be degenerate, you might as well be a lady about it, don't you think? — Armistead Maupin

Brian's face turned pouty. "So you were just blowing smoke up my ass." Anna smiled dimly. "You may have been inhaling, dear, but I wasn't blowing. — Armistead Maupin

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

There is no fifth destination. — Armistead Maupin

Solitude was no reason for sloppiness — Armistead Maupin

Look," said Mary Ann evenly, "if I think you're really attractive, there must be plenty of men in this town who feel the same way."
"Yeah," said Michael ruefully. "Size queens."
"Oh, don't be silly!" Sometimes Michael was sensitive about the dumbest things. He's at least five nine, thought Mary Ann. That's tall enough for anybody. — Armistead Maupin

Two days after his twelfth birthday, a fortnight before his father was jailed for debt, Charles Dickens was sent to work in a blacking factory. There, in a rat-infested room by the docks, he sat for twelve hours a day, labelling boot polish and learning the pain of abandonment. While he never spoke publicly of this ordeal, it would always be with him: in his social conscience and burning ambition, in the hordes of innocent children who languished and died in his fiction.
Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory: some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth. And the outcome can't be called. Some of us end up like Dickens, others like Jeffrey Dahmer. It's not a question of good or evil, Pete believes. Just the random brutality of the universe and our native ability to withstand it. — Armistead Maupin