How could a maniac give up what he does? … You sit alone, decade after decade, and you try to imagine something out of nothing. Not just imagine it, but again, make a work of art out of it. And you do it so long, that in a certain way you can’t do anything else.

Philip Roth He continues: “It’s hard to give up something you’ve been doing for 55 years which has been at the center of your life, where you spend sometimes 6, 8, 10 hours a day [doing.] I always have worked every day and I’m kind of a maniac.”