Quotes from Tales of the City

“Nobody's happy. What's happy? Happiness is over when the lights come on."
The older woman poured herself a glass of sangria. "Screw that," she said quietly.
"What?"
"Screw that. Wash your mouth out. Who taught you that half-assed existential drivel?”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Mona knocked at the wrong time.
“Uh…yeah…wait a minute, Mona -- ”
Mona shouted through the door. “Room service, gentlemen. Just pull the covers up.”
Michael grinned at Jon. “My roommate. Brace yourself.”
Seconds later, Mona burst through the doorway with a tray of coffee and croissants.
“Hi! I’m Nancy Drew! You must be the Hardy Boys!”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Garbage, you know, is very revealing.It beats the shit out of tarot cards.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Somepeople drink to foregt, I smoke to remember" Anna Madrigal in Tales of the City...”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Down the Peninsula at Cypress Lawn Cemetery, a woman in a paisley turban climbed out of a battered automobile and trudged up the hillside to a new grave.

She stood there for a moment, humming to herself, then removed a joint from a tortoise-shell cigarette case and laid it gently on the grave.

"Have fun," she smiled. "It's Colombian.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Hey, you look at your tits; I'll look at mine! (Michael Tolliver, Tales of the City)”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Mona … lots of things are more binding than sex. They last longer too.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“We’re gonna be … I mean people like you and me … we’re gonna be fifty-year-old libertines in a world full of twenty-year-old Calvinists.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“if you’re going to be degenerate, you might as well be a lady about it, don’t you think?”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“we’re gonna be fifty-year-old libertines in a world full of twenty-year-old Calvinists.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Could you conjugate that? To sleaze. I sleaze. You sleaze. We all have sleazen.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Well … everything gets old after a while. I personally get a little sick of wrecking my liver at The Lion for the privilege of tricking with some guy whose lover is in L.A. for the weekend.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Well … not exactly together. He’d buy a sofa and I’d buy a couple of matching chairs. One has to plan on divorce at all times … still, it was a landmark of sorts. I’d never gotten to the furniture-buying stage before.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Small world, huh?”
She grinned lewdly. “Not particularly. I’d say you’ve just run out of material.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“There’s a theory,” said Anna, handing him a cup of tea as she climbed back into bed, “that we are all Atlanteans.” “Who?” “Us. San Franciscans.” Edgar grinned indulgently, bracing himself for another yarn. Anna caught it. “Do you want to hear it … or are you getting stuffy on me?” “Go ahead. Tell me a story.” “Well … in one of our last incarnations, we were all citizens of Atlantis. All of us. You, me, Frannie, DeDe, Mary Ann…” “Are you sure she’s out of the building?” “She’s gone to her switchboard. Will you relax?” “O.K. I’m relaxed.” “All right, then. We all lived in this lovely, enlightened kingdom that sank beneath the sea a long time ago. Now we’ve come back to this special peninsula on the edge of the continent … because we know, in a secret corner of our minds, that we must return together to the sea.” “The earthquake.” Anna nodded. “Don’t you see? You said the earthquake, not an earthquake. You’re expecting it. We’re all expecting it.” “So what does that have to do with Atlantis?” “The Transamerica Pyramid, for one thing.” “Huh?” “Don’t you know what dominated the skyline of Atlantis, Edgar … the thing that loomed over everything?” He shook his head. “A pyramid! An enormous pyramid with a beacon burning at the top!”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“The rules of a well-ordered life were never enough when other people refused to obey them.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“Uh … you know, strict.” “With occasional lapses into lacto and ovo, huh?” “Yes. Except on weekends and nights when I’m stoned. Then I’m a steako-lacto-ovo … or maybe a porkchopo-lacto-ovo…”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“A half-hour conversation with Binky was like eating a Whitman Sampler in one sitting.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“THERE WERE MORNINGS WHEN VINCENT FELT LIKE THE last hippie in the world. The Last Hippie. The phrase assumed a kind of tragic grandeur as he stood in the bathroom of his Oak Street flat, fluffing his amber mane to conceal his missing ear. If”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

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Popular quotes

“The habit of doubt; of distrusting his own judgment and of totally rejecting the judgment of the world; the tendency to regard every question as open; the hesitation to act except as a choice of evils; the shirking of responsibility; the love of line, form, quality; the horror of ennui; the passion for companionship and the antipathy to society -- all these are well-known qualities of New England character in no way peculiar to individuals but in this instance they seemed to be stimulated by the fever, and Henry Adams could never make up his mind whether, on the whole, the change of character was morbid or healthy, good or bad for his purpose.”
― Henry Adams, quote from The Education of Henry Adams

“Umreti, to, naravno, znači izgubiti vreme i otići iz njega, ali to ujedno znači steći večnost i trajnu sadašnjost, a to znači pravi život. Jer suština života je sadašnjost i njegova tajna predočava se samo na mitski način, u vremenskim formama prošlosti i budućnosti.

Ni lepota nikad nije savršena, te baš zbog toga i podstiče sujetu.

Kome je mnogo dato, tome može mnogo i da uzme. Ako me Gospod učini bogatim, on može i da me pretvori u zemni prah i da me učini siromahom poput nekog pogorelca; jer njegova ćud je silna i mi nismo u stanju da spoznamo puteve njegove pravednosti.

Gledao sam gore, to zacelo stoji! Posmatrao sam kako svetlost zrači, kako veličanstveno promiče, i moje su se ognjenim sunčevim strelama pozleđene oči krepile na blagom sjaju noćne zvezde.

Ja može svako da kaže, ali ko to kaže, to je bitno.

SETI SE MENE KAD BUDEŠ DOSPEO U SVOJE CARSTVO.

Čovek mora da vodi računa čime će se ukrasiti, mora da pripazi da se ne odluči za ono što mu ne pristaje.

Videti ne znači imati. Ali videti znači hteti imati.

Ili je život opsena, ili je lepota opsena. Nećeš oboje naći sjedinjeno u stvarnosti.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Joseph and His Brothers

“It doesn’t bother you that your canine brethren are being paraded around show rings like slaves?”
“My canine brethren?” I said. “I don’thave any canine brethren.”
“How can you say that! You’re a werewolf.”
“That’s right. I’m a werewolf, not a poodle. What makes you think I have any kinship with dogs?”
― Carrie Vaughn, quote from Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

“Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Ringed Castle

“I now possessed a large number of varied and decidedly wonderful friends, whom I valued immeasurably. Through them I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it, I discovered, which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be, of always striving to see the truth of them.”
― Lucy Grealy, quote from Autobiography of a Face

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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