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.

There's always a door you don't get in. I'm a star in my own right for certain things. I'll own that. During Oscar weekend I did fabulous things. But there's still one inner sanctum I'm not allowed in. That's the one I'm fixated on.

If someone had come up to me at Yale and asked me how many homosexuals there were in my class, I would have said I don't think there are any. There may have been a few who were shy with girls. You have to understand, this was the 1950s.

[Calvin Trillin] was very "shoe," which means he was a big jock, a big deal.

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.

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

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