The Paris Review: Is there anything else you can say to beginning writers?
Georges Simenon: I think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else. Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don’t think an artist can ever be happy.
The Paris Review: Why?
Georges Simenon: Because, first, I think that if a man has the urge to be an artist, it is because he needs to find himself. Every writer tries to find himself through his characters, through all his writing.
From the Art of Fiction #9, Georges Simenon
