As A Younger Man I Wrote For

Rampaging Horsemen Can Conquer; Only The City Can Civilize.

Not Too Many People Work In A Job Where, Waiting Out There Are Three Or Four Hundred People Who Are Paid To Tear Apart What You've Done. And Often They Are Brighter Than You Are, Or They Know More About The Subject Than You Do, Or They Wish They Had Written A Book Themselves, Or Done A Lot Better. Or They Just Don't Like It! And You Have To Live With It.

I Write At Eighty-five For The Same Reasons That Impelled Me To Write At Forty-five; I Was Born With A Passionate Desire To Communicate, To Organize Experience, To Tell Tales That Dramatize The Adventures Which Readers Might Have Had. I Have Been That Ancient Man Who Sat By The Campfire At Night And Regaled The Hunters With Imaginative Recitations About Their Prowess. The Job Of An Apple Tree Is To Bear Apples. The Job Of A Storyteller Is To Tell Stories, And I Have Concentrated On That Obligation.

I Have Never Thought Of Myself As A Good Writer. Anyone Who Wants Reassurance Of That Should Read One Of My First Drafts. But I'm One Of The World's Great Rewriters.

I Think The Crucial Thing In The Writing Career Is To Find What You Want To Do And How You Fit In. What Somebody Else Does Is Of No Concern Whatever Except As An Interesting Variation.