The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

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.

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.

One more recent novelist to come along is Cormac McCarthy. Him, I like.

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

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

I've been writing about James Fenimore Cooper. He was not a writer. Here was a man who was 30 years old and had never put anything more than his signature on paper.