I think being central to the culture is overrated. Who really gives a damn if something is popular? Jay-Z isn't actually any better than James Joyce even though more people understand him.

Sometimes it seems to me that the celebration of a person is really just a prelude to ridicule.

I was so very interested in literature and so relatively uninterested in the movies when I was a teenager.

My parents were very patient with my pretentious little adolescent snobberies. It took me awhile to accept them.

A Good Soldier is one of my favorite novels, for various reasons. But the class question is a good one, because it's not always easy to empathize with privileged people.

Much to my surprise, there's a sense for people in the cable industry that fiction writers might actually be good at script writing. You can write dialogue!

Sacrificing one's life on the altar of literature is in some ways like sacrificing a goat to some malicious spirit. It's not always a humane or necessary decision.