Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

Calvin [Trillin] has never done anything majorly objectionable.

— Kevin Sessums

I'm persona non grata at the New Yorker.

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

When one person mentors, two lives are changed.

— Kevin Sessums

I was not "shoe." That's a misuse of the term "shoe," which is derived from "white shoe."

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

I've done every other thing in life except intimacy. That's the aberration, the thing I've never had.

— Kevin Sessums

I believe we really became friends [with Larry Kramer] when we bonded at our fifteenth class reunion in 1972.

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

To some people, knowledge and science are everything. To me, God is everything I don't know.

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

I find myself applying the addict's impulse to how I cruise. I don't look at the ass. If I see a hot…

— Kevin Sessums

I was so unhappy as a child in Washington I figured if I'm going to Yale, I am going to start a…

— Kevin Sessums

[ John] Winthrop was the man who first said America was "a city upon a hill," which [Ronald] Reagan then appropriated. There…

— Kevin Sessums

If someone had come up to me at Yale and asked me how many homosexuals there were in my class, I would…

— Kevin Sessums

"Weenie" was definitely a word we used at Yale back then. But I'm not sure you were one, Larry [Kramer]. Also, you…

— Kevin Sessums

I haven't had sex in two and a half years. A guy I met in San Francisco gave me a sympathy blow…

— Kevin Sessums

My father was dead by the time I became a writer, and he would have had a heart attack if he had…

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

I just so desperately wanted to be published in New Yorker, and I'd so desperately try to get something in it. But…

— Kevin Sessums

You're talking about the 1970s now and not the 1950s. We were all more sophisticated by that time, and I just assumed…

— Kevin Sessums

[Robert Gottlieb] wouldn't have published 'Remembering Denny' . Denny was a Rhodes Scholar. He was on the swimming team. Had this great…

— Kevin Sessums

In Western culture, there's a dichotomy between the easy narratives of God and the Devil. I now believe in this greater overarching…

— Kevin Sessums

Another example of what I have to put up with from him. But there was a time I was mad at all…

— Kevin Sessums

Just to put that in some context, 1954 was the same year that From Here to Eternity won an Oscar. Swanson's manufactured…

— Kevin Sessums

[Larry Kramer] even wrote this angry letter to the president of Yale, and in it he said what he said to us,…

— Kevin Sessums

Those people are seen, I assume, by Larry [Kramer] as writing partly about gay issues and problems, whether it's on the surface…

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

Hollywood needs peripheral people like me. You're not of that world, but you're needed.

— Kevin Sessums

[Larry Kramer] thinks Charles de Gaulle was gay. He thinks Max Schmeling was gay.

— Kevin Sessums

I have never heard that referred to before, that term: Jewish men from Yale.

— Kevin Sessums

I never appear in any of your work, come to think of it, Calvin [Trillin]. And I look.

— Kevin Sessums

We didn't know each other [with Larry Kramer at Yale], but we had a lot of mutual friends.

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums