When I was 15 years old some kid at my school asked me what I felt about the draft and Vietnam. He wanted to know if I expected to go to war and if I was happy about that possibility.

I told him that I had no intention of fighting the Vietnamese, “first, and most importantly, because I have no desire to be killed or maimed and secondly, because I feel no hatred toward or fear of the Vietnamese people.”

These are the words I used and even at the time I wondered where they had come from.