When one person mentors, two lives are changed.

I'm sorry to keep focusing on the New Yorker, but everybody who was growing up when Calvin [Trillin] and I were growing up wanted to be published in the New Yorker.

I think basically what The American People is about is that we've been here from the very beginning, and that has never ever been acknowledged in the history books. John Winthrop wasn't off the boat ten seconds before he passes a law that homosexuals should be hanged. And then he hung 'em, including an attempt to hang his own son when he found out he was gay.

I never appear in any of your work, come to think of it, Calvin [Trillin]. And I look.

I believe we really became friends [with Larry Kramer] when we bonded at our fifteenth class reunion in 1972.

I was so unhappy as a child in Washington I figured if I'm going to Yale, I am going to start a new life. I'll change my name to my middle name. So I was known for my four years at Yale as David Kramer.

I could appear in this million-word book [Larry Kramer] are working on. Nobody would even notice me.