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.

I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.

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.

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

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.