I wasn't a [gay] activist, really.

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

The first time I remember our being socially in the same place was after we graduated and [author, investment counselor, philanthropist, and fellow 1950s Yalie] Peter Wolf had a party at his house in the Hamptons.

[Calvin Trilllin] is not writing about things that I can criticize. I can call these other people out for what I think they are not doing. There's a big difference.

[ John] Winthrop was the man who first said America was "a city upon a hill," which [Ronald] Reagan then appropriated. There are incidents like that all through history. We have been here.

My father always wanted me to be president of the United States, and his fallback position was that I not become a ward of the county. I think my father was okay about my going into journalism, though.

I am a theist. I live life between that "a" and the "t." It's a vast little space.