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Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Reverence is fatal to literature.

Perhaps I abandoned criticism because I am full of contradictions, and when you write an essay, you are not supposed to contradict yourself. But in the theater, by inventing various characters, you can. My characters are contradictory not only in their language but in their behavior as well.

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

Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.

Reading 'Youth in Revolt' might have ruined my career because suddenly I wanted to abandon all the emotional truth of something and just go out far on a literary limb with completely implausible things that relied completely on voice and humor. And what saved me is realizing that I couldn't do that very well.

Writing nonfiction has been my most serious education, and for all those years it kept me from even glancing in the direction of despair.

I always thought of myself as a kind of literary bureaucrat. And that was never going to be enough for me.

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

As it was, I realized choosing the study of Chinese literature as my life's work was probably a mistake.