What kind of idea did I have about who I might turn into? I didn't have any idea. I had no idea how anybody turned into anything. I was what I was. I was this… this kid, this boy. I… when I started college I wanted to be a lawyer, but I didn't want to be a lawyer, I just thought that's something… I didn't… that's something you could be, and I was very interested in equality and justice in America, partly I suppose from growing up Jewish. And so I thought that if I was a lawyer I would be marching in the cause of truth and justice. But within a year… and for the first year or so I took prelaw courses and so on, and I enjoyed some of them, but I began to take literature and the bell rang again and that just overwhelmed everything. And so I thought then that I'd be a college professor, that I'd be an English teacher, and that's what I thought throughout college and then I went to graduate school to get an advanced degree to become an English professor. And I… I wasn't interested in commerce. I… my interest in material things was negligible. I didn't want to get a lot of dough and so I thought I'd be a college professor, and in those days college professors were paid very poorly. Maybe they still are. And then I began to write stories. The first ones were no good, they were terrible – little college stories – and then I got better somehow and I began to sell some stories, not to… I didn't make huge sums of money, but people were recognizing that I was… had something. And then I… I sold a story to Esquire Magazine in 1958. I was 25 and I got $800, so I quit my job teaching at the University of Chicago and I came east with my $800, and thinking I could live for $100 a month. I did it and then I was off on… then I was off on becoming a writer. But no, I never dreamed of it, I never wanted it, I never thought of it.
