Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.

There are many things I’ve written that I didn’t really understand until a long time later.

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

My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little training in Paris.

I think situations are more important than plot and character.

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

My dream, I remember, when I went to boarding school, was to have a study all my own, a little nook someplace where nobody could get at me - nobody, like the football coach.