The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

We don't simply read books. We become them.

People ... have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work.