It's just something that only luck or an accident can mend," said the nerve specialist. "Time may do it but I doubt it. Sometimes just a word-the rig… - Edna Ferber

It is a pattern of self-immolation familiar to any writer worth reading. The writer does not even remotely look upon this as a hardship. It is a way of life; a necessary an chosen way of life. Witty conversation, purposely dull dialogue, love, murder, marriage, birth, violence, triumph, failure, death—anything can happen in that room.

I loved the newspaper work, but I like fiction better. Newspaper writing is fine but it doesn’t do to stay at it too long.

This is certain: I never have written a line except to please myself. I never have written with an eye to what is called the public or the market or the trend or the editor or the reviewer. Good or bad, popular or unpopular, lasting or ephemeral, the words I have put down on paper were the best words I could summon at the time to express the thing I wanted more than anything else to say.