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.

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

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

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

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

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.

You make something. You give up expressing and start inventing.