Wolfe and Tan

From an Entertainment Weekly interview, bestselling author Tom Wolfe on his problem meeting deadlines:

"It has been a character defect of mine from early on. When I was unable to do The Bonfire of the Vanities, I had the title and everything, but I didn't know where to start. And I was almost catatonic for eight months. I'd sit in front of the typewriter and nothing happened. I read somewhere that writers as they get older become more and more perfectionist. Which may be because they think more highly of themselves and they worry about their reputations. I think there's some truth to that."

Asked, "It seems like you must enjoy writing. Do you?"

Wolfe replied: "No, I really don't. Every now and then, there's something I know is going well, but I wouldn't call it fun exactly."

From an Academy of Achievement interview with Amy Tan:

"I also grew up, thankfully, with a love of language. That may have happened because I was bilingual at an early age. I stopped speaking Chinese when I was five, but I loved words. Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power."