Kevin Sessums

When one person mentors, two lives are changed.

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

Calvin [Trillin] has never done anything majorly objectionable.

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

I'm persona non grata at the New Yorker.

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

There was a lot really awful about that time [in fifties] if you were gay.

— Kevin Sessums

I'm not denying Christ by not being Christian. I'm a theist, which involves expanding on the Christ narrative.

— Kevin Sessums

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

— 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

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

— Kevin Sessums

I think I just felt a sadness at some points in my career that what is available to a straight writer is…

— Kevin Sessums

I am a theist. I live life between that "a" and the "t." It's a vast little space.

— Kevin Sessums

Is it easier for you to have straight friends, Larry [Kramer], since you seem so often disappointed in your gay friends who…

— Kevin Sessums

[Calvin Trilllin] is not writing about things that I can criticize. I can call these other people out for what I think…

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

One of the few nice things about [time in Yale] was you got to know people before there were labels on them,…

— Kevin Sessums

If there was criticism about [Oscar Wilde], it was because it was written by a straight man who wasn't very educated about…

— Kevin Sessums

I talked to [Larry] Kramer a little bit about it while I was writing 'Remembering Denny' . Denny was one of those…

— Kevin Sessums

My father always wanted me to be president of the United States, and his fallback position was that I not become a…

— Kevin Sessums

I was raped: I said no and he wouldn't stop. I also had a scar on my back and blood coming out…

— Kevin Sessums

I wrote an essay too, and mine started something like, "When I was asked to contribute to this book, I said, 'I…

— Kevin Sessums

Back in Kansas City, I associated Harvard with sort of gnarly guys who wore capes for effect in a kind of Oscar…

— Kevin Sessums

I think basically what The American People is about is that we've been here from the very beginning, and that has never…

— Kevin Sessums

[Larry Kramer] got really mad at me once. The precipitating incident was a speech at Yale by the first President Bush's Secretary…

— Kevin Sessums

I get rejections from the New Yorker. When I had to give a little talk to the people graduating from the MBA…

— 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

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

— 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

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— 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

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

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums

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

— Kevin Sessums