"The Problem With Writers...

...is that you have to be a bit of a manic-depressive in order to keep at it. Not literally a manic-depressive, mind, terrible thing, mania, depression - but metaphorically. You have to generate all of these ideas and all of these sentences and words and then you have to pick at them and sort them and criticise them and throw them away and start again, and I think it unbalances you in the end."

That's Ian Sansom letting fly in an interview with Bookmunch. In the same vein, he says:

"Would you want to spend even five minutes of your time with a writer? Thomas Mann, or James Joyce? E.B. White even, or Thurber? Elizabeth Bishop? You read the biographies and you think, Jesus, these people are the absolute pits; you'd avoid them like the plague in the school playground or at the shops."