We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn't threaten us. It was a holy war, just as we've made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant.

Having no talent is no longer enough.

Everything's wrong on Wikipedia.

Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.

The New York Times is the worst in that hardly anybody can write English over there. Most of it reads like slight translations from the German.

The critics are like tourists who return from a trip saying they've "done" Machu Picchu: "Okay, we've done magical realism," so now we can throw it out.

a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)