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 consider myself much better adjusted than Gabriel.

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

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.

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

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.

Being in love is the only transcendent experience.