The theory of the teacher with all these immigrant kids was that if you spoke English loudly enough they would eventually understand.

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.

All over the world today, not just in the totalitarian countries, assiduous functionaries in Ministries of Truth are clubbing history dumb and rendering language insensible.

The images of things are not the things in themselves.

Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.

I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.

I've always felt, as a writer, that radicals are fascinating because they're relations, they have a place in the American family. They're the relatives everyone wishes would go away. They're the embarrassments to decorum and good taste.