Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. – Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, December 1957

It is possible to regard Norman Mailer as one of the prices we pay for widespread literacy. – Richard Gilman, “Why Mailer Wants to be President,” in The New Republic, 1964 Fe

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. – Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947