The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.

American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.

[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. 
He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way he’s carrying a gun. 
This is one of the essential images in American mythology.