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‘You get very selfish about writing as you get older.'

11 February 2002

'You get very selfish about writing as you get older. You've got only so much energy and you want to save it for your own work. I'm much more interested in being able to do my own work than bringing a wonderful new writer into existence. Because my feeling is that if he or she is truly a wonderful new writer, they're going to come into existence on their own..'

Norman Mailer on life as a writer, in the Guardian