I've had a tough time with Pynchon. I liked him very much when I first read him. I liked him less with each book. He got denser and more complex in a way that didn't really pay off.

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.

To be an American (unlike being English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history.

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

When somebody asks me what I do, I don't think I'd say critic. I say writer.

I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis.

I used to be fond of Indian arm wrestling.