Stephen King. Now I'm not crazy about him, but he's a great a writer.

Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics.

If the public likes you, you're good. Shakespeare was a common, down-to-earth writer in his day.

No one likes my books except the public.

Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt.

Critics themselves, they used to tear me up.

I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn't use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics.