Everything seems so small here now, old, mashed-in, more rundown even than I remember it, but with a heartbreaking familiarity at each door that makes me wonder if I can take in anything new, so strongly do I feel in Brownsville that I am walking in my sleep.

Yet it puzzled me that no one around me seemed to take God very seriously. We neither believed nor disbelieved. He was our oldest habit.

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others’ minds.

A year after Hemingway died on the front page, Faulkner went off after a binge, as if dying was nobody’s business but his own.

Art changes all the time, but it never “improves.” It may go down, or up, but it never improves as technology and medicine improve.

History has become more important than ever because of the to unprecedented ability of the historical sciences to take in man’s life on earth as a whole.

When a writer talks about his work, he’s talking about a love affair.

To have a sense of history one must consider oneself a piece of history...

Modern American literature was born in protest, born in rebellion, born out of the sense of loss and indirection which was imposed upon the new generations out of the realization that the old formal culture-the “New England idea”-could no longer serve.

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others' minds.