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.

Solitude was no reason for sloppiness

Taureans are stubborn as hell. They never want to tell you what sign they are.... But underneath that tough Taurus hide beats the heart of a hopeless romantic.

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 had been a storyteller by instinct all my life. I was that boring little kid who made the rest of his friends sit around the campfire and listen to his ghost stories. It's been very much a part of my makeup.

I think many writers write because it's a convenient way to explain themselves to themselves. We take the chaos and the turmoil and the bullshit of our lives, and we make it into something that has a harmonious shape and sound.

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