Tony Kushner has said that Larry [Kramer] thinks everyone always has to agree with him.

When one person mentors, two lives are changed.

[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.

When I graduated [from Yale], I went back to Larry [Kramer]. But when I go to Yale reunions, there are still people who call me David.

Calvin [Trillin] was much more of a mover and a shaker. That's all I'm saying. I was a "weenie." That was another term back then.

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

I'm sorry to keep focusing on the New Yorker, but everybody who was growing up when Calvin [Trillin] and I were growing up wanted to be published in the New Yorker.

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 out.

"Shoe" just meant you were a big jock on campus no matter what field you were in.

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

One thing I learned in sobriety is to stop being judgmental, to always be discerning. When I drive, that will be my bumper sticker.

Time is God’s gift to us as humans

Far, far below the deepest delvings of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.

Some trips are more than distance traveled in miles.

If there is moral insanity, " he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "then there may be the reverse, immoral sanity, if you will, that comes upon one suddenly, like a fever.

Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence.

I think education has a bigger impact on the lives of people than absolutely anything else.

The burning embers within me burst into flame / My body becomes a fire-lit torch. / Ho someone! Send for the mid-wife.

Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation.

Believe it or not, I sold my first novel, Crank, with only seventy-five pages complete. It was in verse then, and it was hard-hitting then.

I like being around people that mean what they say.