Armistead Maupin Quotes

I had some really dear friends who died from AIDS-one in particular. His family wasn't around and he didn't have many friends. I spent a lot of time with him in his later days.

I lost a very dear friend who lived with AIDS for about 17 years. Rejecting early treatments that were iffy, he thought he saved himself. I really miss him a lot.

The bulk of my learning - if I may call it such - has come within the past three months, after I became a part of the fragile body of patients who make up an AIDS hospice. Here, surrounded by teams of supportive nurses, attentive doctors, and interns, one gently comes upon his own strengths and shortcomings.

Most of my friends are dead. I watched friends die in my arms at 5, 6, 8. When I grew up, the rest of my friends died of AIDS.

I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.

I decided that, if I were to write a teen series, I'd want to set it in a place that was familiar to me - Manhattan, where I'd grown up - and I'd model the characters on myself and my friends.

When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident.

A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.

This has been harder for my friends. I know I'm going to die.

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.

We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease, and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific.

A terminal diagnosis can really mess with your head. Honestly, it makes you want to run away to the moon. Many ALS patients want to fade away quietly. This was not for me.

Sick people, particularly those with serious conditions, greatly prefer the company of their friends and family to residence in a hospital or nursing home.

When my lover Hubert Sorin was dying of AIDS, he was always trying to fix me up - posthumously, as it were - with the cute busboy at the hotel.

The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing... You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

My husband Don's mother, Denise, was diagnosed with cancer, and she was given eight months to live. We decided to go and stay there and help live her days with her, 'cause you don't get those chances again, right?

Bodily discomfort and emotional fear and attachment make the dying uncomfortable and fearful. So, to help those dying people, I think modern medical science has a lot of facilities to reduce pain, or perhaps not to reduce pain, but not to experience pain.

We all have somebody in our lives, that however closely related or not, is affected by terminal illness and these amazing nurses, who often work through the night with people, not only suffering from a terminal illness but their families, they're just extraordinary people.

I hate cats. But this cancer cat made me feel bad, so I was like, Okay, I'll take her back to L. A. and give her her last six months of pain-free life.

depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.

Having a go at kids with a terminal illness is really beyond the pale, absolutely beyond the pale.

There is nothing more painful than watching a child with a terminal disease.

As a teenager, I struggled a lot, had several major depressive episodes, and ended up dropping out of high school and getting a GED.

Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was a lad. From then on, he lived in fear that death was just around the corner, and he set about programming me to work hard and bring in some cash.