What I should have said to you about being a writer would have gone something like this: One has the choice now of coming before the world as a writer or actually being one.  The Mailers and the Angries are dissatisfied with what you call the rapping on the cell wall, and they have decided to make a public appearance in the writer's role.  I don't take you for a silly man.  You are nothing like an Angry; still you were encountering difficulty in the role, and wanted to be acknowledged by the others.  It seemed to me a trivial thing for you to be doing.  You had it all over most of the people there anyway, and weren't denied publication, and you might therefore have gone a little more softly with them, less gifted and less lucky as they were.  An odd tightness or hardness came over you when they criticized you.  I saw my own pale tense face twenty years ago, and I spoke and no doubt I said the wrong thing.  I owed you this explanation then but didn't offer it because I was distracted, annoyed with the whole conference and angry with myself for having gotten into it.

Saul Bellow, Life and Letters, “Among Writers,” The New Yorker, April 26, 2010, p. 53 (abstract only online.  Email me and I'll hook it to you)