The good thing about being gay, though, I always believed, is that you didn't make anyone go to a wedding. Nobody wants to go to a wedding. Nobody. It kind of bothers me now that you have to go to gay weddings, too. I don't care. It's still a wedding. And I would give anybody double gifts if they would elope.

In America, if your next-door neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want one too. But in England, if your neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want him to die in a fiery accident. That's a quote from someone else, but there's something about American optimism, that feeling you can do anything if you're at least middle class in America. If I can have a writing career, anyone can. There's nothing special about me.

I'm for gay elopement, not for gay weddings. I've been with my boyfriend for twenty years. I don't feel like that would validate our relationship in any way. But I would really fight for someone else to have the right. Just elope, though, please.

I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.

I've maintained old friendships, like with people I knew in the nineteen-seventies, but have lost the knack for meeting new people. This has a lot to do with my writing schedule. I don't want to be disturbed, and the willingness to be disturbed is, I think, part of being a good friend.

Thank god I'm in England, because if I lived in any other country, it'd probably be the Philippines. Because with Rodrigo Duterte as the leader they couldn't really give me attitude on Donald Trump.

Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless.