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

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.

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

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

Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.

It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the readers opportunities to follow it at every step.