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

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

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

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

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 left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.

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