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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.