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

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.

It’s true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for whatever reasons, I found the company of others, especially other boys, quite terrifying and upsetting.

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

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

I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for a while, about which the less said the better, and then I was in the Mediterranean, about which the more said the better.

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