For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.

There must be an alternative between Hollywood and New York, between those two places psychically as well as geographically. The University of Iowa tries to offer such a community, congenial to the young writer, with his uneasiness about writing as an honorable career, or with his excess of ego about calling himself a writer.

I have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Columbia, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana State University, Colorado, Stanford, and scores of other places.

The relationship of the two problems is rather the reverse. To a great extent disarmament is dependent on guarantees of peace. Security comes first and disarmament second.

It's to be a person who's able to shoot little arrows into sacred cows and knock politicians off their pedestals, to look out for hypocrisy, advocate for all sorts of things from social justice to peace.

Please God, I'll never be in a war zone, but everything I sort of know about people who come back is that it's a hard transition to make. I mean, even if you've not been in a war, even if you've just been in the Forces, you come back and probably have more fights in civilian life.

Even when you're being safe, eight hours of choreography makes you look like you've been through a war. It's hard. It's like playing hockey for eight hours.