I never met anybody in my life who says, I want to be a critic. People want to be a fireman, poet, novelist.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis.

When all of us are forgotten, people will still be remembering Stephen King.

Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.

Anybody in the next centuries wanting to know what it was like to be a poet in the middle of the 20th century should read Kaddish.

There are things in American culture that want to wipe the class distinction. Blue jeans. Ready-made clothes. Coca-Cola.