W. Somerset Maugham

Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

“Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

they’re not very good mysteries; they’re also not very good Faulkner). Also under his own name, Jorge Luis Borges wrote the astounding metaphysics that built his international reputation, including at least two famous detective stories (“Death and the Compass” and “The Garden of Forking Paths”)

Endless books and authors followed, as we worked our way methodically down the list: The Count of Monte Cristo, Edgar Allan Poe, Robinson Crusoe, Ivanhoe, Gogol, The Last of the Mohicans, Dickens, Twain, Austen, Billy Budd … By the time I was twelve, I was picking them out myself, and my brother Suman was sending me the books he had read in college