Some people say you have to be a Christian to be saved. I had to stop being Christian to be saved.

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."

[Larry Kramer] even wrote this angry letter to the president of Yale, and in it he said what he said to us, that he was so disappointed in his straight friends because of AIDS and everything. He wrote the letter around March. And in it he wrote, "I usually go to the Trillins for Christmas, but I just couldn't do it this year."

I think it's a Jewish Yale custom. I wasn't aware that other people celebrated Christmas. My wife was very big on Christmas, and I was very big on my wife.

That's why I tried to kill myself when I was a student [in Yale]. I thought I was the only one there.

We didn't know each other [with Larry Kramer at Yale], but we had a lot of mutual friends.

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