When I was a child I did engage in an arduous struggle to pass: learning English, getting rid of my accent, becoming conversant with the culture in all its large and small aspects.

Many writers and artists portrayed the poor sympathetically, and even fought on their behalf, but they themselves were not of that class. Gay life is perhaps even more subject to ambiguity, since it so often involves crossing classes.

I always give money to a sidewalk con if the story is a good one, even if I don't believe a word of it. Art deserves to get paid.

My method is the magpie's: I look for shiny things. That is, I look for concrete material details of daily life, and I look for vigorous prose, which is the only kind I can read for very long. That effectively bars a great deal of scholarly work, but I didn't feel its loss.

Books entered my house under cover of night, from the four winds, smuggled in by woodland creatures, and then they never left. Books collected on every surface; I believe that somehow they managed to breed

I wasn't born in New York and I may never live there again, and just thinking about it makes me melancholy, but I was changed forever by it, my imagination is manacled to it, and I wear its mark the way you wear a scar. Whatever happens, whether I like it or not, New York City is fated always to remain my home.

Subjectivity is my middle name, a trick memory is my pack mule, and self-contradiction is my trusty old jackknife.