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

I think situations are more important than plot and character.

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

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.

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.

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