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I had hoped to go to law school, but the war started, and because of the strong feeling that I did not want to kill anybody, I joined the Merchant Marine when I graduated from Berkeley.

I auditioned in Chicago for Juilliard and didn't get in. I was basically living in a back room of my parents' house, paying rent and not doing anything with my life. I'd like to say it was patriotic to join the Marines, but it was also that I was doing nothing honorable with my life and spending too much time at McDonald's.

Now, when I was in the Army, writing was my hobby.

I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.

I was put in the Air Corps. I was never educated to serve in the military, but soon my activities in the American Air Corps became very interesting to me.

I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses.

I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer.

I went in the Marines when I was 16. I spent four and a half years in the Marines and then came right to New York to be an actor. And then seven years later, I got my first job.

Nothing drew me to the film business. I was propelled by the fear and anxiety of Vietnam. I had been drafted into the Marines. My brother was already serving in Vietnam. I bought, if you will, a stay of execution - both literally and figuratively - and went on to graduate school of business from the law school that I was attending.

I went straight from the Marine Corps to the MFA. The way that you would express things among Marines is somewhat different than the way you're supposed to express things in a creative-writing workshop.