“I know what I’m after in prose, now anyway, (meaning for the present) and hope to give you a couple of samples of it at the end of six months. If it is no f[…]ing good I’ll know it and praise by Steffens, Mrs. Butler, George Horace Lorimer, Paul Rosenfeld, Bill Bird, Warren G. Harding, H.L. Menken, Pussyfoot Johnson, Dave O’Neil, Eugene O’Neil, Florence O’Neil, Rose O’Neil, Mother MacCree, Rudyard Kipling, Clare Sheridan, Max Eastman, John Quinn, John Drew, John Wanamaker, Malcolm Cowley, or Leticia Parker will cut no bloody ice.”
–Ernest Hemingway, Letter to Ezra Pound (November 8, 1922), quoted on page 295 of A. Scott Berg. “The Hunt for Hemingway.” Vanity Fair October 2011: 282-295.