Chronic Douche moments courtesy of the Paris Review.

Interviewer: You mentioned economic freedom. Does the writer need it?

Faulkner: No. The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper... Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she
will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back
of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

***

Interviewer: Despite the great variety of the characters you have created in your novels, it is very noticeable that you have never given a sympathetic or even a full-scale portrait of a working-class character. Is there any reason for this?

Waugh: I don't know them, and I'm not interested in them. No writer before the middle of the nineteenth century wrote about the working classes other than as grotesques or as pastoral decorations. Then when they were given the vote certain writers started to suck up to them.


Wow.


Also, interestingly enough:


Interviewer: What do you think of American writers? F.Scott Fitzgerald or William Faulkner, for example?

Waugh: I find Faulkner intolerably bad.