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

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

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 left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.

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

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

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