I think situations are more important than plot and character.

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.

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

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.

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

I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.

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