Quotes from Tales of the City

Armistead Maupin ·  272 pages

Rating: (29.1K votes)


“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


About the author

Armistead Maupin
Born place: in Washington, D.C., The United States
Born date May 13, 1944
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Popular quotes

“Grace.” His head dipped toward mine. “Tell me to leave.”
“No,” I whispered back, relaxing into the wall, and he melted into me with a groan. “I want you to stay.”
He looked into my eyes as if searching for the answer to something. “If I stay I’m going to fuck you.”
I trembled in reaction to his bluntness and licked my lips before I moved my feet, widening my legs so he could fit just right between them. His eyes flared at the movement, and I reached up so our lips brushed as I whispered. “I’m counting on it.”
― Samantha Young, quote from Moonlight on Nightingale Way


“Little world, full of scars and gashes, ripened with another's pain,
Your flowers feed on carrion--so do your birds;
Men feed on each other because you taught them life was cheap,
Flowing from your endless womb without pain or understanding.
No midwife caresses your flesh or bathes clean your progeny,
Life spurts from you, little world,
and you regard it with disdain.
Only bruised men sense your cruelty,
men whose life has lost its meaning.”
― James Kavanaugh, quote from There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves


“Under pressure, men drink alcohol and invade other countries; women eat chocolate and go shopping.”
― Allan Pease, quote from Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It


“Lucien bent and searched through the scraps of paper at Loki’s stone feet for the blood-kissed prayer Dante had placed among them. Finding it, he plucked it from the pile and straightened.
The fading essence of creawdwr blood magic tingled against his fingers. Unfolding the liquor store receipt, he read the words scrawled in Dante’s lefty slant:
Watch over her, ma mère. S’il te plaît, keep her safe. Even from me.
Lucien reread the prayer until the words blurred. He closed his fingers around the receipt, the paper crinkling against his palm. He had no doubt who she was — Special Agent Heather Wallace.
Wounded, his child, yes. Damaged, yes. But Dante’s heart was whole and in love, it seemed, with a mortal. Perhaps Heather Wallace could bind Dante and help keep his sanity from unraveling.
Insanity. The fate of an unbound creawdwr.”
― Adrian Phoenix, quote from In the Blood


“Life was too short and ended too suddenly. If you didn't take advantage of what you had today, tomorrow it might be ripped from you.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Bayou Moon


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