"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)
Context: I don't think the isolation of the American writer is a tradition; it's more that geographically he just is isolated, unless he happens to live in New York City. But I don't suppose there's a small town around the country that doesn't have a writer. The thing is that here you get to be a writer differently. I mean, a writer like Sartre decides, like any professional man, when he's fifteen, sixteen years old, that instead of being a doctor he's going to be a writer. And he absorbs the French tradition and proceeds from there. Well, here you get to be a writer when there's absolutely nothing else you can do. I mean, I don't know of any writers here who just started out to be writers, and then became writers. They just happen to fall into it.
“You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.”
“If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing… then you are a writer.”
“When you get… to the end, you see that love and family are all there is. Nothing else matters.”
Source: Firefly Lane
A "tweet" by John Cleese on his @JohnCleese [verified] Twitter account, 4 Apr 2017
In an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Location', Spring 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 54
1960's
Source: Alice Through the Looking Glass
