On Tom meeting Richard in 1986:
"[Buckley] was adorable, and he was a complete fool. He was sort of dancing around, flashing his eyes at me, and trying so hard to be charming. I decided in that elevator ride that I was going to marry him. I'm very pragmatic, and I was, like, OK, there's some kind of connection here."
Richard on their first date:
"Tom sat there chit-chatting: "And in 10 years I'm going to be showing my own collection in Paris, and I'm going to be a millionaire, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that." And I kept thinking, This guy is really naïve. But as we talked about other things, it was almost like seeing down a rabbit hole. I felt like I was looking at his eyes, and it was just spinning around and taking me down inside him."
Tom on moving in together:
"He gave me the key to his apartment and asked if I’d move in, and I did. We’d known each other barely a month. He’d lived with someone for three or four years, but it wasn’t really a serious relationship, and he was very consciously looking for that. He had come to that stage of his life at age 38, and I was at that stage at age 25, but we were both ready to settle down and fall in love and have a life with someone. I had slept with a lot of people and done my fair share of drinking and dancing and drugs. I'd had sex for the first time when I was 14. I had a girlfriend in high school who was pregnant twice while we were together. In those days, in the '70s, abortion was considered a form of birth control, and I think in most high schools at the time, it was quite casual."
Tom on being together with Richard for so long:
"The response is often, "Wow, you guys have been together 24 years! That's so amazing. I don't think of gay men being together that long." And I'm, like, "Why? What are you talking about?"
