When one person mentors, two lives are changed.

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

There was a lot really awful about that time [in fifties] if you were gay.

Calvin [Trillin] has never done anything majorly objectionable.

[ John] Winthrop was the man who first said America was "a city upon a hill," which [Ronald] Reagan then appropriated. There are incidents like that all through history. We have been here.

I'm persona non grata at the New Yorker.

In Western culture, there's a dichotomy between the easy narratives of God and the Devil. I now believe in this greater overarching spiritual thing. We are the light and the dark, and have to own the darkness. It's part of us. It's not evil. It's needed. You need to own both of them to be whole. Absorb it, and live it as part of your life.