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

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.

Calvin [Trillin] has never done anything majorly objectionable.

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

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.

I was raped: I said no and he wouldn't stop. I also had a scar on my back and blood coming out of my ass. To some that's just rough sex. Some would read that sentence and be turned on by that: the 51st Shade of Gay.

I've done every other thing in life except intimacy. That's the aberration, the thing I've never had.