Ralph... Would Treat The Day's Decisions As

An Orotundity, Which I Define As Nobelitis A Pomposity In Which One Is Treated As Representative Of More Than Oneself By Someone Conscious Of Representing More Than Himself.

Biography Always Has Fulfiled This Role. Robinson Crusoe Is A Biography, As Is Tom Jones. You Can Go Through The Whole Range Of The Novel, And You Will Find It Is Biography. The Only Difference Between One Example And The Other Is That Sometimes It's A Partial Biography And Sometimes It's A Total Biography. Clarissa, For Example, Is A Partial Biography Of Clarissa And A Partial Biography Of Lovelace. In Other Words, It Doesn't Follow Lovelace From When He Is In The Cradle, Though It Takes Him To The Grave.

I Began To Write When I Was Seven, And I Have Been Writing Off And On Ever Since. It Is Still Off And On. You Can Say That When I Am On, When I Know I Have A Book Which I Am Going To Write, Then I Write Two Thousand Words A Day. That's So Many Pages Longhand.

The Navy's A Very Gentlemanly Business. You Fire At The Horizon To Sink A Ship And Then You Pull People Out Of The Water And Say, 'frightfully Sorry, Old Chap.'

I Don't Think They [contemporary Writers] Read Me Either. I Mean, If We're Concerned Genuinely With Writing, I Think We Probably Get On With Our Work.