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.

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.

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

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.

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