I think our hopes are made when we are young, and we can never adjust them to the real world. - Heidi Pitlor

after a luncheon party with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Luise Rainer, Greta Garbo, and two producers — “I think it was a psychological test to see how I would act” — Knopf offered O’Brien work as MGM’s “European Scenario Editor.

Make it interesting and it will be true: this is what story writers live by.

But what happens if and when writers begin to outnumber readers? What happens when writing becomes more attractive than reading? Will we become — or are we already — a nation of performers with no audience?