
“As a writer, I see myself more as a communicator. For me, writing is the best part of my career.”
"Billboard Magazine" (11 October 2003)
2007, 2008
Author's Note (1929 edition)
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
“As a writer, I see myself more as a communicator. For me, writing is the best part of my career.”
"Billboard Magazine" (11 October 2003)
2007, 2008
The Paris Review interview
Context: Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity. When cockerels confront each other and daren’t fight, they busily start pecking imaginary grains off to the side. That’s displaced activity. Much of what we do at any level is a bit like that, I fancy. But hard to know which is which. On the other hand, the machinery has to be kept running. The big problem for those who write verse is keeping the machine running without simply exercising evasion of the real confrontation. If Ulanova, the ballerina, missed one day of practice, she couldn’t get back to peak fitness without a week of hard work. Dickens said the same about his writing—if he missed a day he needed a week of hard slog to get back into the flow.
“Every one of my books had killed me a little more.”
answer to question "How different is your music now from what it was 20 years ago?"
2006
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working
“Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.”
Source: Tablets