“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I’ll waste no time reading it.”

“Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code … a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name.”(Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)”

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”

“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”

“She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”