Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.

I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board of other partners tells you it's time to get your gold watch, and no physical claim is made on you like an athlete or an actress. So I try to plug along on the theory that I can still do it. I still keep trying to produce prose, and some poetry, in the hope that I can find something to say about being alive, this country, but generally the human condition.

Basically it's true that my own life has been my chief window for life in America, beginning with my childhood and the conflicts, the struggles, the strains that I felt in my own family.

Revolution is just one crowd taking power from another.

Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.

What we need is progress with an escape hatch.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.