Authorial Onanism

I'm a big fan of the first book collecting Paris Review interviews, which I wrote about here. Now, The Elegant Variation gives a preview of the next volume, which is due this fall:

INTERVIEWER: Do you see much of your fellow authors?

GRAHAM GREENE: Not much, they are not one's material. A few of them are very dear friends of mine but for a writer to spend much of his time in the company of authors is, you know, a form of masturbation.

I often think the same thing about spending time with aspiring writers, of which there are approximately six million in New York. Though, I guess that's not so much masturbation as group fantasy or something. I don't know -- the blog's never really gotten kinky, so I'm at a loss here. But all of this reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Annie Hall, which I watched for the eight-thousandth time last weekend: "Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love."