I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own

My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have

I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.