Literature is memory written down. All literature is memory.

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

I think of magazines as cultural entities rather than boxes of corn flakes that can be sold and shipped around.

America is essentially an entrepreneurial culture: the sizzle is the steak, because, after all, if you buy the sizzle, the steak comes with it. Canada's, in contrast, is a primary-producing culture: we'll buy the steak and hope to get a little sizzle with it. But we know we can't eat sizzle.

You can't write anything you want. Once you write that first chapter, then everything else is determined. You can write anything you want, but only one thing works.