What became visible only after your working life slowed down or ended?

The day I retired from teaching, again, was one of the most satisfying days of my life and it was sad, but when I — the day I retired, I went home and I was by myself and I was having a glass of wine. I was thinking about the lunch the teachers gave me that day. The retirement lunch. And I was able to look back on that life, that 30 years in the classroom, and say — I was able to congratulate myself. I'm glad I did that. That was good. I felt useful, that I don't think I would have felt if I had gone into business or something like that.

In 1990 I retired from my firm, I.M. Pei & Partners, and for two years I didn't do much. Then I started to get kind of antsy, so I decided, I'm going to do some more work. And I chose to do work outside the U.S. because I've spent 45 years here and I wanted to learn more about what's happening in the rest of the world.

Now, it's been very hard for me to accept that. I never - I felt like - I always felt like I could blow it and nothing would never happen until this happened. So now, it's - no matter how hard I practice, it just seem like I can't do the plays I did.

I ignored my stand-up career for 25 years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.