Negativity is often looked upon [in the USA] as a kind of thought crime. Not since the advent of socialist realism has the world witnessed such pathological upbeatness.

Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination; if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic.

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman "other" or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

Man eternally tries to get back to an organic past that has slipped just beyond his reach.

You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!

Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced.