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

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

The reason Saul Bellow doesn't talk to me anymore is because he knows his new novels are not worth reading.

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

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

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.