I graduated in 1952 and went to Europe, with Niki and our first child Laura, who was then a year old.

Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints --the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk --we think we're using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we're its slavish agents.

And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didnt.

I'd been brought up on the Upper East Side in a WASP society, which was death on crutches.

You make something. You give up expressing and start inventing.

I think situations are more important than plot and character.

And then, when I left Princeton in the middle of my sophomore year, I went into the navy.