If you want to know who the oppressed minorities in America are, simply look at who gets their own shelf in the bookstore. A black shelf, a women's shelf, and a gay shelf.

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.

There is no fifth destination.

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

Writing is too hard not to do exactly what you want to do. It's a very draining and agonizing process for me, and I don't want to live with any piece of work that I don't believe in completely. I have to believe completely in what I'm doing. It has grown organically out of my own experience.

I've always drawn on bits and pieces of my own life