The Making of a Writer

August 1963–December 1968

1963
London, England
August 7

It is with immense relief that I close the door to my room on the top floor of a Chelsea house, settle into a comfortable bed, and listen to the sounds of the night, the muffled hum of traffic down by the embankment, the tuned-down rock and roll of a German radio program (bringing back the night I was interrogated in a East Berlin police station, fall 1961). True, time is the villain and we are trapped in him. True, love is sometimes not returned. True, friends are sometimes false. But to be aware of this—all of it—and still want to go on living, that is the triumph. It is the reward.