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.

I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.

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

I'd been brought up on the Upper East Side in a WASP society, which was death on crutches.

There are many things I’ve written that I didn’t really understand until a long time later.

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

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

I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for a while, about which the less said the better, and then I was in the Mediterranean, about which the more said the better.

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

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.

My dream, I remember, when I went to boarding school, was to have a study all my own, a little nook someplace where nobody could get at me - nobody, like the football coach.

The best decisions are often those made from the creative part of your mind and not the emotional part of your heart.

Salvation is the greatest soul.

Dealing with one who feels smarter than you, let him assume that you ain't smarter than him.

You ever want me to show you what it's like to have a man in your bed, you know where to find me.

If there's something you want to build, but the tech isn't there yet, just find the closest possible way to make it happen.

Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.

Like the eagle, we (artists) must be able to see clearly.

You'll never see me in the red leather. I don't have the chin for it.

You don't need to be famous to live a life as an artist.

When we appreciate how much we have, we feel the urge to pare down, get back to basics, and learn what is essential for our happiness. We long to realize what's really important.