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….

I get rejections from the New Yorker. When I had to give a little talk to the people graduating from the MBA program at Columbia who were going into ….

My father was dead by the time I became a writer, and he would have had a heart attack if he had read the first thing I wrote when it came out. My mo….

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..

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….

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

Calvin [Trillin] has never done anything majorly objectionable..

That's why I tried to kill myself when I was a student [in Yale]. I thought I was the only one there..

I talked to [Larry] Kramer a little bit about it while I was writing 'Remembering Denny' . Denny was one of those people who took a long time to come….

Larry [Kramer] had already experienced so much loss by then from the AIDS epidemic. But I don't think it changed anything between us..

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

I don't think everybody's gay. But I think a lot more people are than the world knows about..

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

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 fat….

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

Is it easier for you to have straight friends, Larry [Kramer], since you seem so often disappointed in your gay friends who can't live up to what you….

I was raped. That was a hard thing to write about. I never owned that part of it. Guys don't look at themselves as being raped. We're not raised that….

One of the few nice things about [time in Yale] was you got to know people before there were labels on them, so you got to know them as people, not a….

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, ….

We don't like to say that [my wife was Jewish] because her mother was Jewish, which means she was Jewish. So don't imply that my wife was a shikse..

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 m….