"There's a writer for you, he said. "Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing. [narrator]It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers-because if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answer-still it belittled him in my eyes. Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying-only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers."