Michael Nava Quotes

Patricia Ryan was a tall, beautiful woman about whom many stories were told, some of them true.

"You want me to stipulate that the cops violated her constitutional rights?"
"This is the LAPD we're talking about, Kim. It would be shocking if they hadn't violated her rights."

[Henry, to Elena, about Angel] "Remember when Edith called him an invulnerable? I've figured out that what that means isn't that things don't hurt him, but that they don't stop him."

After he left, the three of us sat on a bench worn to the wood by all the fidgeting bottoms that had occupied it before us.

He had the open, cheerful, rather self-satisfied countenance of someone upon whom life had made very few demands.

All I knew about his life was that he had had the kind of childhood that turns people into psychological time bombs. How would I react when he started to go off? Did I have my own time bomb ticking away in me?

[Elena, about daughter] "Now I understand that it isn't up to her to be who I might want her to be. It's up to me to love her for who she is."

[Henry, to Tony Earl] "I'll argue self-defense."
"You do that," he said, "but last time I looked at the jury instructions on self-defense, if someone comes at you with fists you don't get to blow their brains out with a semiautomatic."
"You can if his fists can kill you," I said.

This is my life, I thought, these are the people among whom I have spent it, prostitutes, tattooed boys with dead eyes, and horny cops.

[Henry] "Maybe she hasn't learned yet that good people can make terrible mistakes and still be good people."

It had that unnatural stillness of a place where people feared to venture outside.
"You better come in before someone tries to kill you," she said. "Did you lock your car?"
"Yeah. It has an alarm."
"That won't stop anyone around here."
"Bad gang problem?"
"When I was raising my kids, they used to play out in the streets. You see any kids out there now?"

[Dr Hayward, to Henry, after his heart attack] "Sex is not going to kill you — well, let me amend that. Safe sex is not going to kill you."

He laughed, but then in a serious voice said, "I have my slips. You gotta know that about me."
"Anyone who has standards has slips, John. Only good people worry about being good."

[John] "I tell you, Henry, I did not want to grow up. I figured if I grew up, I would stop having fun."
"Something change your mind?"
"No. I was right! You do stop having fun, or maybe the things that were fun when you were a kid stop being fun. For a while I just did 'em more, faster, harder, trying to get the fun back, but it didn't work."

[Henry, to Vicky] "I know you think homosexuality is a sin, but that's because you've been taught by ignorant people."