William Faulkner

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INTERVIEWER

Does a writer compromise in writing for the movies?

FAULKNER

Always, because a moving picture is by its nature a collaboration, and any collaboration is compromise because that is what the word means—to give and to take.

INTERVIEWER

Which actors do you like to work with most?

FAULKNER

Humphrey Bogart is the one I’ve worked with best. He and I worked together in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep.

INTERVIEWER

Would you like to make another movie?

FAULKNER

Yes, I would like to make one of George Orwell’s 1984. I have an idea for an ending which would prove the thesis I’m always hammering at: that man is indestructible because of his simple will to freedom.

-- William Faulkner at The Paris Review

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Collectors

I overhear the phone-answering machine recording a message for me. Apparently my student-loan collectors still like to make some loud noises. I am told that it is in my interest to call them back. Yeah, like that is really going to happen. I would just as soon press my hand down on a red-hot stove-top burner. It has been twenty-five years. I am an old man now. Is it possible that they would file a legal action now? Anything is possible, I guess.