William Faulkner

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INTERVIEWER

Can you say how you started as a writer?

FAULKNER

I was living in New Orleans, doing whatever kind of work was necessary to earn a little money now and then. I met Sherwood Anderson. We would walk about the city in the afternoon and talk to people. In the evenings we would meet again and sit over a bottle or two while he talked and I listened. In the forenoon I would never see him. He was secluded, working. The next day we would repeat. I decided that if that was the life of a writer, then becoming a writer was the thing for me. So I began to write my first book. At once I found that writing was fun. I even forgot that I hadn’t seen Mr. Anderson for three weeks until he walked in my door, the first time he ever came to see me, and said, “What’s wrong? Are you mad at me?” I told him I was writing a book. He said, “My God,” and walked out. When I finished the book—it was Soldier’s Pay—I met Mrs. Anderson on the street. She asked how the book was going, and I said I’d finished it. She said, “Sherwood says that he will make a trade with you. If he doesn’t have to read your manuscript he will tell his publisher to accept it.” I said, “Done,” and that’s how I became a writer.

-- William Faulkner at The Paris Review (1956)

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Marilyn Monroe

In light of the recent Supreme Court decision making gay marriage the law of the land, we have a quotation from Marilyn Monroe that is rather on point. She was discussing the rumors of her lesbianism with the journalist W.J. Weatherby.

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“I was remembering Monty Clift. People who aren't fit to open the door for him sneer at his homosexuality. What do they know about it? Labels – people love putting labels on each other. Then they feel safe. People tried to make me into a lesbian. I laughed. No sex is wrong if there’s love in it. But too often people act like it's gymnasium work, mechanical. They'd be as satisfied with a machine from a drugstore as with another human being. I sometimes felt they were trying to make me into a machine.”

-- Marilyn Monroe

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[Source: Sarah Churchwell, "The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe"]

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