“[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.”

“That night, after the movie, driving my father's car along the country roads, I began to wonder how real the landscape truly was, and how much of a dream is a dream.”

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

“But then it came time for me to make my journey—into America. [... N]o coincidence that my first novel is called Americana. That became my subject, the subject that shaped my work. When I get a French translation of one of my books that says 'translated from the American', I think, 'Yes, that's exactly right.”

“He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.”

“I thought about soccer in history, the inspiration for wars, truces, rampaging mobs. The game was a global passion, spherical ball, grass or turf, entire nations in spasms of elation or lament. But what kind of sport is it that disallows the use of players' hands, except for the goalkeeper? Hands are essential human tools, the things that grasp and hold, that make, take, carry, create. If soccer were an American invention, wouldn't some European intellectual maintain that our historically puritanical nature has compelled us to invent a game structured on anti-masturbatory principles?”

“I have only a bare working knowledge of the human brain but it's enough to make me proud to be an American.”