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.

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.

Outing is a nasty word for telling the truth.

The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives.

My mother once told me that if a married couple puts a penny in a pot for every time they make love in the first year, and takes a penny out every time after that, they'll never get all the pennies out of the pot.

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

I consider myself much better adjusted than Gabriel.