I had already done a lot of research for Rough Riders, keeping notebooks and old photographs. Some of the books were antiques for that time period, with the covers falling off.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think when you get interested in antiques, the most frustrating thing is that books don't have enough photos. When you go to a flea market or garage sale, you see lots of things you've never seen before and you have no idea what the price is going to be or should be.
I love old books. They tell you stories about their use. You can see where the fingerprints touched the pages as they held the book open. You can see how long they lingered on each page by the finger stains.
If you're a retailer and know that once a year you're going to get Mary Higgins Clark's book on a given date, you're going to have an awful lot of copies out there in time for that. You'd have to be simple-minded not to do that - although bookselling prior to 1950 never made that connection.
My favourite finds are often antique pieces with a history.
My father brought me a box of books once when I was about three and a half or four. I remember the carton they were in and the covers with illustrations by Newell C. Wyeth.
I haven't collected memorabilia. I am not a person who lives in the past.
I wrote a number of pieces in the year 1966 that were so bad that, although I'm a great collector of my own pieces, I have never collected them.
Paperbacks of those we deem classics should be cheap and sold at supermarkets.
My first book was a car crash. I tried to find all the copies and destroy them.
I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.