[Larry Ross] "There are only two stages to dying, Henry. Being alive a — Michael Nava

"[Henry Rios] I went down to my car, got in and sat, waiting for something to happen, some tidal wave of grief or anger to overwhelm me, but all I felt was a kind of dazed fatigue. It was the mental emptiness of effort I used to feel when I was a distance runner on my high school track team, and everything got reduced to putting one foot in front of the other. What was I then, fifteen, sixteen, pounding the dirt path along the river that ran through my home town? I sought refuge in that emptiness from my first awareness that I was different from other boys. What had Chris told me about his own adolescence, that he didnt want to be different? I didnt, either. I watched my classmates being initiated into the world of men and women where everything was planned and the outcomes known: marriage, children, family. That world was closed to me. I didnt have a plan, didnt know where I would end up or with whom. So I ran, mile after mile, until my body ached and my mind went blank. What happened is that I realised I could not outrun this thing. I remember that day, staggering along the path after a stupendous effort, darkness falling in the summer sky, racked with the dry heaves, gasping "Im a queer," the only word I knew for my condition. I was full of fear and I felt completely alone, but I could not deny the truth and there was a kind of relief in that. I had now reached the same point with Joshs disease. I couldnt outrun it."

"The Abbey was on Robertson, just below Santa Monica, on the edge of Boys Town. Low brick buildings housed cafes, clothing stores, coffee houses and watch repair shops that rubbed elbows with gay clubs and sex shops. These establishments catered to hordes of the beautiful young gay men who lived in the big apartment complexes that lined the side streets or who drove in from all over Southern California on weekend nights. I seldom ventured there, because it reminded me of San Francisco in the 70s, when I was a boy just coming out and how out of place Id felt among the big-muscled boys who cruised each other with cold assessment. Twenty years later, only the faces and the clothes had changed; the air was still charged with the brutal calculation of lust. And beneath that was the claustrophobia of a ghetto, of fearful people looking out at the world from behind invisible fences."

"[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 didnt work."

"[Ben Vega, with Henry Rios] "How can you defend a guy like that?" "If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that question Id be retired by now," I replied. "So do you really want an answer or were you just asking so you can feel superior to me?" Startled, but game, Vega said, "Yeah, I want an answer. Really." "Well, the answer changes depending on the case," I replied. "Sometimes I defend someone because I think he deserves a break,, or maybe just because I like him. And sometimes I do it because, whatever the guys done, worse has been done to him." I grinned. "And sometimes I do it for money. And sometimes I do it because no one else will. Like this case."

"It was sometimes easier to read the future from the entrails of a cat than get a fix on what a judge was thinking, and Torres-Jones was particularly hard to get a handle on."

"[Josh] "Just listen to me. I dont want to die, Henry. I want to be like everyone else. I want my seventy-five years or whatever, but I know Im not going to have them and it makes me crazy." He tipped his head back and swallowed hard. "I cant help resenting you. Youre going to be alive after Im dead and youll find someone else." He drew a deep breath. "Its not fair. I had to get away from you. I had to get away from my own resentment."