Everyone disappoints [Larry Kramer]. So it's not a problem for him either way.

I could appear in this million-word book [Larry Kramer] are working on. Nobody would even notice me.

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

[Larry Kramer] said, when it was all about to fall through, "You betrayed me, Calvin." And I said, "I resent that. I was against you from the beginning."

It's always been hard to be gay in Washington.

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.

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."