I get rejections from the New Yorker. When I had to give a little talk to the people graduating from the MBA program at Columbia who were going into writing and filmmaking and everything, I said, "When I tried to think of what to say, the only subject I thought was appropriate for people doing what you're going to do is rejection." That's what it's all about.

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

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.

[Larry Kramer] got really mad at me once. The precipitating incident was a speech at Yale by the first President Bush's Secretary of Heath and Human Services, Louis Sullivan, against which Larry led a demonstration. He got the demonstrators to drown out Sullivan's speech, which wasn't allowed.

I wrote an essay too, and mine started something like, "When I was asked to contribute to this book, I said, 'I could do a piece on [Larry] Kramer as a pain in the ass, but I suppose you have too many of those, as it is.'" And Sarah's began something like, "When I read about America's angriest AIDS activist, I can't believe they are talking about my sweet Uncle Larry."

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

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."