“I never had any ambitions to be a novelist.”

“No novelists any good except me. Sovietski -- yah! Nastikoff -- bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.”

“I have never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game--the masses." - Mark Twain, a Biography”

“There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good.”

“...they'll say, 'He never recovered from that breakdown and this was the result. It had to be the breakdown--not even he was that dreadful a novelist.”

“I don't have any babies or ambition. I have it all!”