Quote

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

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness.

The contemporary American novelist benefits in a way from being ignored. It makes you angrier and makes you want to go into all of those places where you shouldn't.

To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confinement, living and breathing the books that we're writing.

I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer.

The American writer has his hands full, trying to understand and then describe and then make credible much of American reality.

A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if he's any good, is not an entirely benign entity in the world.

American writers, at least those of us who are fortunate enough to support ourselves in the field, are by and large a lucky lot.

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter.

The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.