After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term and a whole other year, so I was able to do two years in a little less than a year and a half.

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

I think situations are more important than plot and character.

My dream, I remember, when I went to boarding school, was to have a study all my own, a little nook someplace where nobody could get at me - nobody, like the football coach.

I graduated in 1952 and went to Europe, with Niki and our first child Laura, who was then a year old.

What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.

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