Quote

"Everybody's got an apprenticeship period, and nobody can tell you how long it's going to last. For me, it was seven years. For Harry Crews, it was ten years. For Faulkner, it was about five years. It's different lengths for different people, and if you quit, nobody's ever going to hear from you. So, you have to write all this stuff and throw it away and fail and fail and fail and keep going, until you finally suceed."
-- Larry Brown, from Conversations with Larry Brown

I'm about four years into my own apprenticeship, and this is a nice reminder to keep at it...incidentally, I'm a very tardy arrival to Larry Brown, of whom I've heard nothing but raves for the past few months. I suspect that my next few years will be devoted to rectifying my oversight.

(Via Beatrice.)