It really was a brutal place, Los Angeles, less a city than a collection of hostile villages united only in their mutual suspicion of each other and … - Michael Nava

[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 struggle is not about sex. It is about privacy, individuality, and civil equality and the right of all Americans, not just gay and lesbian Americans, to be free.

[Miguel Sarmiento, to Alicia] "I do not wish to be disrespectful of your beliefs, but in my view religion is no more than superstition, a way to explain natural phenomena for which there are now rational and scientific explanations. Those superstitions may have served their purpose once, but their time has passed. The longer they persist, the more pernicious they become. "