I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that nobody can deny it.

I think people have come to expect that in artistic representation; that every work of art should be a work of extravagant hope.

Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer's job is: go out and find some stuff to love.

Equality has always been extant but some of us just didn't know it.

There's this de facto assumption that for something to have value, it has to be economically self-supporting - which imposes a very low ceiling on a culture.

With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.

Art is not some inessential frippery - it is the nation's means of intelligently regarding itself. To cripple or stigmatize the arts is to doom one's nation to a life of incuriosity, dullness, literalness and the worst kind of rank materialism.