My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.

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

DeLillo never seems committed to me to what he is writing. Very nice surfaces, but he's got nothing underneath.

Faulkner sat in our living room and read from Light in August. That was incredible.

It's funny to be a critic.

Hemingway seems to be in a funny position. People nowadays can't identify with him closely as a member of their own generation, and he isn't yet historical.

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