I'm somewhat shy about the brutal facts of being a carnivore. I don't like meat to look like animals. I prefer it in the form of sausages, hamburger and meat loaf, far removed from the living thing.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.

Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.

In memory's telephoto lens, far objects are magnified.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

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