JD Salinger

To the point: I happen to know, possibly none better, that an ecstatically happy writing person is often a totally draining type to have around. Of course, the poets in this state are by far the most "difficult," but even the prose writer similarly seized hasn't any real choice of behavior in decent company; divine or not, a seizure's a seizure. In the wake of anything as large and consuming as happiness, he necessarily forfeits the much smaller, but for a writer, always rather exquisite pleasure of appearing on the page serenely sitting on a fence. Worst of all, I think, he's no longer in a position to look after the reader's most immediate want; namely, to see the author get the hell on with this story. ...but I fully intend, from time to time, to jump up personally on the reader's back when I see something off the beaten plot line that looks exciting or interesting and worth steering toward. Speed here, God save my American hide, means nothing whatever to me. There are, however, readers who seriously require only the most restrained, most classical, and possibly deftest methods of having their attention drawn, and I suggest--as honestly as a writer can sugest this sort of thing--that they leave now, while, I can imagine, the leaving's good and easy. I'll probably continue to point out available exits as we move along, but I'm not sure I'll pretend to put my heart into it again.