Anthony Burgess comments on Being an Novelist

I am by trade a novelist. It is, I think, a harmless trade, though it is not everywhere considered a respectable one. Novelists put dirty language into the mouths of their characters, and they show these characters fornicating or going to the toilet. Moreover, it is not a useful trade, as is that of the carpenter or the pastry cook. The novelist passes the time for you between one useful action and another, he helps fill the gaps that appear in the serious fabric of living. He is a mere entertainer, a sort of clown. He mimes, he makes grotesque gestures, he is pathetic or comic and sometimes both, he sends words spinning through the air like colored balls.

- Anthony Burgess, The Clockwork Condition, The New Yorker, June 4, 2012