Michael Nava

“[Henry Rios, with Kevin Reilly] "Sometimes I can't believe what people do to each other." "Believe it," he said. "There's nothing that hasn't been done by someone to someone. People settling scores is what keeps us in business."”

“I had loved so infrequently I felt a debt to those whom I had, for the reprieve from solitude.”

“[Henry] I shrugged. "Being born into my family was like being thrown into an accident."”

“I didn't know what else to say. Moments like this brought home to me that no matter how well I thought I knew him, how much I loved him, we were on different sides of the fence that separated the infected from the uninfected. I could see a little way over to his side, but he lived there.”

“[Henry Rios, with Josh] "I think someone's at the door." "I'll see who it is." "If it's the grim reaper, tell him he's a couple of years early."”

“[Paul Windsor, with Henry Rios] Holding up a red M&M, he added, "I thought they'd stopped making these." "Someone started a letter-writing campaign and got the candy company to start making them again." I opened a 7-Up and took a swig. It was as warm and thick as the air in the room. "It's funny what people get themselves worked up about."”

“[Henry Rios] It has never taken much for me to dislike a cop. My automatic assumption that most of them are assholes is seldom disappointed.”

“After talking to Mark, I'd spent much of the night in the kind of "what if" ruminations that served no particular purpose except to depress me.”

“[Henry Rios] "I acquired my values through trial and error." What I'd meant when I told Paul my values were acquired through trial and error was that they were learned, not given, and came out of my own experience.”

“[Henry Rios, to Paul Windsor] "Society is a conspiracy and everyone who's different is its target."”

“Lips pursed, Sara moved swiftly and rudely through the crowd of midday shoppers as we crossed the square. Sara'd been thin as a girl, but no more. Not quite fat, but the extra weight she carried blurred her features. Pouches of flesh had gathered beneath her eyes and her chin. Damp circles stained her armpits and the seat of her dress was deeply wrinkled. Her makeup was hit-and-miss and she had the look of someone who no longer cared much about her appearance.”

“[Henry Rios, with Elena] The heat had become a bit denser and the light a little dustier as the fragrant morning waned. Birds called from the surrounding trees and the low burble of water sounded from the stream that ran through Elena's property. "This is heaven," I said, opening the car door. She smiled, deepening the lines around her mouth. "Have you ever read Primo Levi?" "No." "He has a passage in his book about concentration camp survivors―to the effect that those who have once been tortured go on being tortured. Heaven's not possible for people like that."”

“Larry was in his study, going through a pile of papers. Watching him, it occurred to me that I hardly knew him at all. It was as if all these years I'd been seeing him in profile and now that he turned his face to me, it was the face of a stranger.”

“[Irene Gentry] "Some people are just so beautiful that life seems to speak to us through them - they're vital, radiant. It's more startling in men than women, I think, because we don't usually let ourselves think of men that way. But Shakespeare knew. Remember the sonnets? 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day,' was written to another man."”

“It was one of those winter days in Los Angeles when the wind has swept away the smog and the air is clear and the light still and everything has the immediacy of a dream. I parked on a street called Overland in the Hollywood Hills. It was lined with white-skinned birch trees. Their nude branches shimmered against the sky. Tattered yellow leaves clogged the gutters and the air was scented with the rainy smell of eucalyptus. There were no cars on the street and the houses were barely visible behind walls and fences and sweeping lawns that had never been trod upon except by gardeners.”

“[Irene Gentry] "We all love according to our natures."”

“[Josh and Henry] "Do you want to?" he whispered. I raised myself on my elbow and said, "Of course I do, but I haven't carried rubbers with me since I was sixteen." "Just this once," he said. "You could pull out before - you know." I squeezed his neck between my fingers. "No," I said softly. "There's AIDS, Josh. It's not worth the risk."”

“They were empty gestures, the kind it was beginning to seem that these people were full of.”

“His eyes were judging me. It was as if I was the last of a long line of grown-ups who would fail him.”

“[Larry Ross] "There are only two stages to dying, Henry. Being alive and being dead."”