Russia, France, Germany And China.

Although Most Of Us Know Vincent Van Gogh In Arles And Paul Gauguin In Tahiti As If They Were Neighbors -- Somewhat Disreputable But Endlessly Fascinating -- None Of Us Can Name Two French Generals Or Department Store Owners Of That Period. I Take Enormous Pride In Considering Myself An Artist, One Of The Necessaries.

Don't Put Off For Tomorrow What You Can Do Today Because If You Enjoy It Today, You Can Do It Again Tomorrow.

Russia, France, Germany And China. They Revere Their Writers. America Is Still A Frontier Country That Almost Shudders At The Idea Of Creative Expression.

I Would Suppose I Learned How To Write When I Was Very Young Indeed. When I Read A Child's Book About The Trojan War And Decided That The Greeks Were Really A Bunch Of Frauds With Their Tricky Horses And The Terrible Things They Did, Stealing One Another's Wives, And So On, So At That Very Early Age, I Re-wrote The Ending Of The Iliad So That The Trojans Won. And Boy, Achilles And Ajax Got What They Wanted, Believe Me. And Thereafter, At Frequent Intervals, I Would Write Something. It Was Really Quite Extraordinary. Never Of Very High Merit, But The Daringness Of It Was.

I Have Only One Bit Of Advice To Beginning Writers: Be Sure Your Novel Is Read By Rodgers And Hammerstein.