All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.

There are things in American culture that want to wipe the class distinction. Blue jeans. Ready-made clothes. Coca-Cola.

Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.

I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love.

I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.

Gertrude Stein really thought of Hemingway as frail. He almost married Stein.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.

I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis.

My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.

The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.

Consciousness, much like our feelings, is based on a representation of the body and how it changes when reacting to certain stimuli. Self-image would be unthinkable without this representation.

I'll show you just how cruel a sport basketball is.

I want to make lemonade out of the lemons that were dealt to me.

No temptation can gravitate to a man unless there is that is his heart which is capable of responding to it.

I do not believe the border is secure and I still believe we have a long, long way to go.

Hear all ye angels, progeny of light, Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.

Don't equate the presence of God with a good mood or a pleasant temperament. God is near whether you are happy or not.

My family is still very Southern Baptist, and they're religious.

Artists erase reality to a greater or lesser extent, and substitute their own reality - created by their brains, instead.

Successful people fail often, and, worth noting, learn more from that failure than everyone else.