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

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.

Music had been my first love among the arts, and I was fascinated by it, as I still am.

Write about the things that attract you. Choose your subjects the way you used to choose your toys: out of desire.

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

It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the readers opportunities to follow it at every step.

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