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.

Cooper wrote a novel which is absolutely indistinguishable from Austen, completely from a female point of view, completely English, no sense that he was an American.

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

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.

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.