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Do you remember thinking of yourself as an American?

No.

What did you think of yourself as?

I didn't. I was sort of transitory. I was always a little strange to them, because I was always coming from somewhere else. The most telling example of that was when I finally moved from Lausanne to Paris. Having been to a French school for three years, I went to a French school in France and on the first day I was asked to recite and the entire class burst out laughing. I couldn't figure out what I'd done that made them all laugh. French Swiss has got a terrible accent. They'd never heard that accent before.

You moved in 1928?

Yes. When I went to the Ecole de Montcel. Literally, on the first day I was asked to get up and recite and there was an explosion of laughter. That was a real shocker. What in God's name had I said that was so terrible, that made them all laugh? It was just the accent.

What do you think of yourself as today? Did you gain a national identity somewhere along the way?

Yes, I finally became an American, a U.S. citizen, but