On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

by Stephen King

think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all. I’m not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.

Americans are a lot more interested in TV quiz shows than in the short fiction of Raymond Carver.

And perhaps this is why it is so broken - a society that bans books but not guns…