I don't like the vulgarity of Oscars weekend, but it's also sweet. It's prom weekend for anyone who didn't experience the real prom: the nerds, gay, arty outsiders. Hollywood is high school with money.

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

If there was criticism about [Oscar Wilde], it was because it was written by a straight man who wasn't very educated about the gay world.

[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.

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.

[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 think I just felt a sadness at some points in my career that what is available to a straight writer is not available to a gay writer.