I used to be fond of Indian arm wrestling.

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.

Understanding proximate cause is also like understanding your mother: It can take years and then, just when you think you have her figured out, she surprises you.

We entertain God's Truth not as a guest but as master of the house.

Was the happiness of knowing these girls really unattainable? It would certainly not have been the first happiness of that sort which I had abandoned all hope of ever enjoying?

There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.

Whatever the universal perspective one adopts, it is important to recognise that some form of universalism is politically and ethically necessary.

Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake.

I am not afraid of much. I kill all the spiders in my house, and I'm planning to go skydiving. I am into girl power, and I'm very self-sufficient.

I lived in London for a time in the '90s and I love it here. You know, I just go and see shows and have great dinners and walk around.

I love to cook. I could never give that up.

I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.