It's funny to be a critic.

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.

The gift of literature is the grace of knowledge.

Reading is the spark to imagination. Ignite yours and live forever free.

So I lived alone. The first thing I did was take off my pants. Naturally.

I been running up a bill with the devil ever since, and now he's come to collect on the debt.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.

When everything in life gets so complicated it only takes a day to change it

Fooles give to please all but their owne.

I had a very crazy aunt and uncle who we traded my brother Webster to for a Siamese cat. It was heaven to live with my aunt and uncle because you got spoiled to death.

I'm really just a country boy.

The Christian life is a pilgrimage from earth to heaven, and our task is to take as many as possible with us as we make this journey.