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.

Everyone disappoints [Larry Kramer]. So it's not a problem for him either way.

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

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

When I graduated [from Yale], I went back to Larry [Kramer]. But when I go to Yale reunions, there are still people who call me David.

My father was dead by the time I became a writer, and he would have had a heart attack if he had read the first thing I wrote when it came out. My mother still keeps her copy of Faggots hidden away in a bottom drawer.

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