“I am an ambitious writer – I don’t see the point of being anything, no, not anything at all, if you have no ambition for it.”

“I thought about how all that mattered, in all entirety, and all I wanted, and all I could see anything being worth anything for, was being a writer.”

“I used to have more tolerance for these views, but I am losing patience with what I see. The test of anything is the fruit it bears. I see no good fruit being born.”

“Now I pass up about twenty-five or thirty thousand of honest gain because I like being a detective, like the work. And liking work makes you want to do it as well as you can. Otherwise there’d be no sense to it. That’s the fix I am in. I don’t know anything else, don’t enjoy anything else, don’t want to know or enjoy anything else. You can’t weight that against any sum of money. Money’s good stuff. I haven’t anything against it.”

“Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.”

“I write because I am a writer, not because I want to get anything out of it.”