The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.

My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me

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

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written

In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young

Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.