In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.