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

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.

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

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.

I think situations are more important than plot and character.