“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession.”

— Jerome David Salinger , book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

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Jerome David Salinger 83

American writer 1919–2010

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“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

“If I get it, no one will ever know to what heights I might have gone as a writer. Maybe if you wrote about the promise that was there, all wouldn't be lost.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

Letter to his brother Jeff from Guadalcanal (28 January 1943); p. 28
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Context: I'm going to ask you something. If I do get killed, and I honestly don't see how I can help it, I want you to write that book we were thinking about when I enlisted. If I get it, it's a cinch I won't be able to do it, and it would make me feel a whole lot better to know that if not my name and hand, at least, the thot of me would be passed on and not forgotten entirely. You know, sort of put into the book the promise that I had and the things I might have written so at least the knowledge of talent wasted won't be lost... If I get it, no one will ever know to what heights I might have gone as a writer. Maybe if you wrote about the promise that was there, all wouldn't be lost.

“Oh, here’s a clever one. Do you remember this question from the first test? It reads, ‘What’s wrong with this statement?’ And do you know what Constance wrote in reply? She wrote, ‘What’s wrong with you?”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

“What were you like," I asked her. "we're you happy? Or were you smiling because they told you to?”

Gabrielle Zevin book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Source: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

"Professions for Women"
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)

“One of those creatures wrote you once, ‘do not call up any that you can not put down’.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

often phrased as "Do not call up that which you cannot put down."
Fiction
Source: "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", written 1927, first published in Weird Tales, July 1941

“I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That's the smile I was smiling.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: Underdog

“I do a dance to make the rain come,
Smile to keep the sky from falling down, down, down, down.
Collect the love that I've been given
Build a nest for us to sleep in here
You know it's real.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"All My Stars Aligned"
Marry Me (2007)

“The thing about writing in America—and I just recently understood this—is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it’s the wrong thing. It’s not a profession. A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can’t do anything else, and then you have another job. I’m always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something. If you just sit there, and you’re a writer, you’re bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals. Writing is not a profession. It’s a calling. It’s almost holy…”

Jamaica Kincaid (1949) Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

On her views of writing in “Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?” https://www.guernicamag.com/does-truth-have-a-tone/ in Guernica (2013 Jun 17)

“Well what happened was I was asked to be on Seinfeld. They said: “Would you do a Seinfeld?” And I said, and I just happened to know to see a few Seinfelds and I knew these guys were really tops; they were really, really clever guys, and I liked the show. And so I said “Sure!” and I thought they would ask me to do a walk-on, the way it came: "Would you come be part of the show?" And I said “Yeah, sure I’ll do it.” You know what I mean? Then I got the script and my name was on every page because it was about my car. And I laughed; it was hysterically funny. So I was really delighted to do it. The writer came up to me and he said “Jon, would you come take a look at my car to see if you ever owned it?”, because the writer wrote it from a real experience where someone sold him the car based on the fact that it was my car. And I went down and I looked at the car and I said “No, I never had this car.””

Jon Voight (1938) American actor

So unfortunately I had to give him the bad news. But it was a funny episode.
In a Red Carpet interview at the 2006 BAFTA Emmy Awards describing his involvement in and appearance on the 1994 Seinfeld episode The Mom and Pop Store http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8o140TFyAA

“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession.”

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Jerome David Salinger 83

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