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.

I like that people who are not experts can not only understand but get engaged by my work. I like that Joe Paterno can read me. Bill Bradley.

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's somebody doing something because I pushed them in that direction.

I think Henry Miller has had huge influence not because he wrote about sex, but because the memoir or the nonfiction novel has become such a monumental force in American publishing, if not in literature.

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.

I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.

Jane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present.