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Since its beginnings, American writing has been in dialogue with other literatures.

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.

There's a tradition in American fiction that is deadly serious and earnest - like the Steinbeckian social novel.

I think throughout the 20th century, for some reason, serious writers increasingly had contempt for the average reader. You can really see this in the letters of such people as Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World.

Domestic realism has dominated the American marketplace for decades now. It leeches into literary fiction, and I don't think it's that rich a vein.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

American literature has always been immigrant.

I've always tried to write about America. It's very worth a writer's effort.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.