Quotes By Leslie Fiedler

Hemingway seems to be in a funny position. People nowadays can't identify with him closely as a member of their own generation, and he isn't yet historical.

The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.

Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.

Faulkner sat in our living room and read from Light in August. That was incredible.

My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.

The reason Saul Bellow doesn't talk to me anymore is because he knows his new novels are not worth reading.

The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.

The novel is always pop art, and the novel is always dying. That's the only way it stays alive. It does really die. I've been thinking about that a lot.

I gave up writing blurbs because you make one friend and 200 enemies.

I used to be fond of Indian arm wrestling.

Foucault was the one person I met in France that I could talk to. He was a mensch. You know whether you agree with him or not because you know what he is saying.

Saul Bellow never took my advice when he was my friend.

It's funny to be a critic.

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's somebody doing something because I pushed them in that direction.

Cooper wrote a novel which is absolutely indistinguishable from Austen, completely from a female point of view, completely English, no sense that he was an American.