Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out and for no other reason.

If you write anything at all: stories, poems, lyrics, melodies, symphonies, speeches, scripts; anything at all, I beg of you to read JD Salinger’s Seymour, An Introduction.

You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it finished. I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you’d remember before you ever sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world you would most want to read if you had your heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.