I write about, more or less, everything I can think of, that is I stretch my imagination as far as it'll go. I am kind of stuck in the middle as far as my life goes, and hence my imagination tends to zero in on things which are indeed in the middle. That is, I don't write about the very rich, who I scarcely know, or the very poor who I don't know very well either.

Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.

Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.

Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.

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

Green grass, green grandstands, green concession stalls, green paper cups, green folding chairs and visors for sale, green and white ropes, green-topped Georgia pines. If justice were poetic, Hubert Green would win it every year.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.