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

I used to be fond of Indian arm wrestling.

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

I admire Ginsberg as a poet, despite the fact that he seems not to know when he is being good and when he is bad. But he will last, or at least those poems will last.

All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.

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.

I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.