[...] A few, more ingenuous or more cynical, asked me for advice: what must one do to win a prize, and, in a general way, to succeed? It was their belief that I must know all sorts of tricks! I had my doubts about their futures; you can't tell at first sight whether someone has or hasn't any talent, but you can tell quickly enough whether he has real reasons for wanting to be a writer. All these salon-haunters wrote only because it's difficult to do otherwise when you're bent on leading a literary life. But none of them really enjoyed the tete-a-tete with blank paper; they wanted success in its most abstract form, and, after all, that isn't the best way of achieving it. I found them as disagreeable as their ambition. One of them practically said to me, ‘I’m prepared to pay.' [...]