“I was lucky to find a teacher, a guide — Rabbi Joseph Sing­er, 62, born in Poland to a family of rabbis, the 10th-genera­tion descendent of Gershon Kitover, who was the brother-in-­law of Baal Shem Tov, founder of the hasidic movement.”

"Legs, you asshole," I said. "I am not doing this story on you. I am not taking the responsibility for making you famous."

“Without a doubt, Armstrong was the greatest trumpet player of the century — the most powerful, the most touching, the most varied”

“Once gay power was a joyous cry in this town. Then the thrust toward radicalism died. The stuffed-shirt gay politico appeared. Lethargy set in”

Voice writers Karen Durbin, Richard Goldstein, Mark Jacobson, James Wolcott, Tom Allen, Terry Curtis Fox, and J. Hoberman weigh in on the 1978 film

"In America, people sometimes hope New York will die before the close of the century. And so the spectre of another Yankee Frankenstein rising from the ash of urban blight is enough to turn stom­achs from Shawnee Mission to Walla Walla"

“I cannot go out a loser, Jack Johnson went out a loser. Sugar Ray went out a loser. Joe Louis went out a loser… I got to be that black man who gets out on top.”

“When I actually made myself look at Harlem, what I saw was so bizarre that, even with the help of those homicide detectives, I found it bewildering — another country, another planet.”

“Don’t wait for a critical consensus to form around a film before you deign to see it. Rush off on your own, and maybe you can start your own cult.”

“The nation’s only openly gay city official had been shot dead, allegedly by the city’s most anti-gay official.”