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

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.

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.

I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.

There are no do-overs in life.

Success is not certain until you are obsessed by your goal

It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature.

You are giving up nothing! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top When the wind blows the cradle will rock When the bough bends the cradle will fall Down comes the baby cradle and all.

It's shocking when someone who is really bad thinks they're really good. It's heartbreaking, because singing is such a vulnerable thing to do.

The world of 'Sherlock Holmes' and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.

In 1950, the biggest amp you could get was no bigger than a tabletop radio.

We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us.

A lot of people see electronic music as a flavor of the week, but it can be more than that - has to be more than that.