Hemingway seems to be in a funny position. People nowadays can't identify with him closely as a member of their own generation, and he isn't yet historical.

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.

Moral living sometimes demands difficult choices. It requires selflessness.

Hiding in His service.

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.

So I will go as far as I can into rock and roll carrying my Christian banner.

Both my mother and father were very supportive of any career move any of us wanted to make.

Australia is a country not so much of fulfillment as of theatrical expectation.

The spirit of a nation is what counts-the look in its eyes.

I'm basically a sexless geek. Look at me, I have pasty-white skin, I have acne scars and I'm five-foot-nothing. Does that sound like a real sexual dynamo to you?

I never really think of something in terms of what not to do. It's always what's appealing or what's cool.

When you fall in love, you become weak.