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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes, the only way out is all in.

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

I believe that a man can only be useful to his country when he can look at it clearly.

You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all.

You are the spokesman for your character, you put on his case. Are you going to win or lose? There'll be no drama if you look like a loser at the outset.

i'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires

You know you can't hope yourself a better life - you must take yourself there.

Once the Champions Tour got in me and got a hold of me, I found out how great this Tour is and how much I enjoy it.

In war, force is used by the belligerents themselves, no effort being made to bring evildoers before a judicial body, each army acting as judge, jury and executioner.

Make a written list of everything you love.