I don't write poetry for the New Yorker. My poems appear in the Nation, mostly.

I had no administrative function at the New Yorker. I am what we used to call in construction back in Kansas City where I grew up "a dog-ass subcontractor."

I'm not denying Christ by not being Christian. I'm a theist, which involves expanding on the Christ narrative.

Hollywood needs peripheral people like me. You're not of that world, but you're needed.

We don't like to say that [my wife was Jewish] because her mother was Jewish, which means she was Jewish. So don't imply that my wife was a shikse.

To some people, knowledge and science are everything. To me, God is everything I don't know.

[Larry Kramer] said, when it was all about to fall through, "You betrayed me, Calvin." And I said, "I resent that. I was against you from the beginning."