American writers ought to stand and live in the margins…

“Within sixty-minute limits or one-hundred-yard limits or the limits of a game board, we can look for perfect moments or perfect structures. In my…

— Don DeLillo

Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic. It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but…

— John Lukacs

The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never…

— Edward Abbey

My friend, Dennis Mathis, was reading Eastern European and Japanese experimental writers, and I brought the Latin American writers to his attention, so we…

— Sandra Cisneros

The most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction.

— William March

I like terrific writing, but I also like a terrific story. My favorite books have both, and they're by contemporary, commercial American writers.

— Lisa Scottoline

When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are…

— Doris Lessing

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has…

— James McBride

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write…

— Alden Nowlan

'Freeing' a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers…

— Mark Helprin

James Baldwin is one of the greatest, North American writers of the second half of the Twentieth Century. A prolific writer and a brilliant…

— Raoul Peck

I have a well-balanced show. It's 50/50 on men/women, and also African-American/white writers, it's the same thing. I have four African-American writers, and four…

— Wanda Sykes

I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that.

— Anne Rice

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

— Bryan Burrough

It's the tradition of American writers getting away in order to see the country - to get a better view.

— Laurie Anderson