It’s hard to stay away from religion when you mess with acid.

What is worst about America was acted out. What is best in America doesn't export.

I was under the influence of the early modern masters, Fitzgerald and Steinbeck and Hemingway, especially, when I was a kid. I reacted against writers like Barth and John Hawkes. I did not care for the post-modernist stuff; my allegiance was to realism.

That's the great thing about literature -- it makes the world less lonely.

You don't want to depend on an editor. If you want to regret something for the rest of your life, you want to make sure you're responsible for it.

One does not consider style, because style is.

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.