“(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious man turns to the idea of God.”

“Everyone wants a prodigy to fail it makes our mediocrity more bearable. ”

“Originality must compound with inheritance.”

“The aesthetic and the agonistic are one, according to the ancient Greeks.”

“Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks.”

“The inventor knows HOW to borrow.”

“...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to...”

“Literature is news which stays news.”

“If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, When youre ready.”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”