That literary-popular distinction is, in my view, vastly overstated. At the far poles there are clearly books that are purely commercial and purely literary, written for audiences that want to see the same thing enacted over and over and over again. But the middle is where most people read and most people write.

So perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

The world was a world of dreaming souls who could not die.

That literary-popular distinction is, in my view, vastly overstated. At the far poles there are clearly books that are purely commercial and purely literary, written for audiences that want to see the same thing enacted over and over and over again. But the middle is where most people read and most people write.

As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.

One of the great themes in American literature is the individual's confrontation with the vast open spaces of the continent.