Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them.

'All Our Yesterdays' was unquestionably the best work I have ever done. And the reading public stayed away in droves.

Teaching is too strong a word for whatever it was I did at Northeastern University

If you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms, and somehow you need to live up to them.

College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner.

I got thrown out of school several weeks in my senior year being caught in the girls' dorm. This was 1954, friends. The girls' dorm was off limits. Even to girls, I think.