I was raped. That was a hard thing to write about. I never owned that part of it. Guys don't look at themselves as being raped. We're not raised that way.

Larry [Kramer] had already experienced so much loss by then from the AIDS epidemic. But I don't think it changed anything between us.

David Remnick [the New Yorker's editor in chief]is about as interested in anything gay as I am interested in anything to do with baseball. It drives me nuts.

I find myself applying the addict's impulse to how I cruise. I don't look at the ass. If I see a hot guy walking towards me I look at his arm, and if he has a vein I fantasize about shooting up with him.

Calvin [Trillin] was much more of a mover and a shaker. That's all I'm saying. I was a "weenie." That was another term back then.

I wasn't a [gay] activist, really.

Larry [Kramer] and I often disagree. There was the whole meshuggaas we went through about his donating his papers to Yale, and I disagreed with him on a number of things about that. You wanted a gay center.