"I always wanted to be a writer, but coming from a working-class background it was hard to feel I had that right. If you're the first generation of your family to go to college, the pressure on graduation is to go for financial security. The whole point of going to college is to get a job. You have it drilled into your head—job, money, security. Wanting to be an artist doesn't jibe with any of those three. If you go back to these people who have "slaved and sacrified" to send you to school, who are the authority figures in your life, and you tell them that you want to be a writer, a dancer, a poet, a singer, an actor, and to do so you're going to wait tables, drive a cab, sort mail, with your Cornell University degree, they look at you like you're slitting their throats. They just don't have it in their life experience to be supportive of a choice like that".
RICHARD PRICE
The Paris Review Interviews - volume I
