A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]

Reading is difficult. People just aren't meant to read anymore. We're in a post-literate age. You know, a visual age. How many years after the fall of Rome did it take for a Dante to appear? Many, many years.

I love librarians more than any other people in the world. When I was an immigrant kid, they’ve made me feel like a human being and they gave me books that taught me English.

In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.

I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.

If my mother hadn't tried to sell me chicken Kiev cutlets for $1.40 after I graduated from college, maybe I would've been the lawyer she wanted me to be.

American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.