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

I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short.

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.

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

Solitude was no reason for sloppiness

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.

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.