I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love.

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.

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

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.

Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know.

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

Saul Bellow never took my advice when he was my friend.