For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.

I always wanted to be a writer, and I did want to be a novelist. In college I took a couple of classes that taught me I would never be a novelist. I discovered I had no imagination. My short stories were always thinly veiled memoir.

I am very grateful to the electronic world for making my life easier, but there is something about holding a book - the smell and the world of association. Even when e-books are perfected, as they surely will be, it will be like being in bed with a very well-made robot rather than a warm, soft, human being whom you love.

I would like to attribute my range of interests to being an independent intellectual, but although I'm independent, I'm not sure I qualify as an intellectual. Basically, I'm an old-fashioned amateur.

The most important thing when starting out with essay writing is to find a voice with which you're comfortable. You need to find a persona that is very much like you, but slightly caricatured.

The problem with the literary hothouse of New York City is that people spend so much time looking in the mirror. They go to parties with people who are just like them, and they write novels about people who are just like them. It's limiting.

I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

Cheese is milk's leap toward immortality.

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.