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

If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion.

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

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.

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

The cultural decoding that many American writers require has become an even harder task in the age of globalisation. The experience they describe has grown more private; its essential background, the busy larger world, has receded.

I certainly think I'll end up writing about America in some form. I've taken plenty of notes. I like America very much.

Once, America's size in the imagination was limitless. After Europeans settled and changed it, working from the coasts inland, its size in the imagination shrank.

It's a big statement if you use the word 'America' in the title of your poem.