DOCTOROW: A writer’s life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure’s bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen.

INTERVIEWER: Except the act of writing itself.

DOCTOROW: Except the act of writing. So if he shoots birds and animals and anything else he can find, you’ve got to give him that. And if he/she drinks, you give him/her that too, unless the work is affected. For all of us, there’s an intimate connection between the struggle to write and the ability to survive on a daily basis as a human being. So we have a high rate of self-destruction. Do we mean to punish ourselves for writing? For the transgression? I don’t know.