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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.