Autograph letter signed : London, to Nicholas Carroll, 1932 January 29.

Thanking Carroll for his "courteous note with its interesting question 'Why is an author an author?'"; responding that "it has always seemed to me that the real writer merely finds that he must give expression to something that boils up in him. Like other forms of self-expression, writing is a safety-valve. The content, ever accumulating must out, and seizes upon that talent which provides the line of least resistance--painting, literary, music, or, highest of all perhaps, living. All such expression, I often feel, even when genuinely creative, is probably au fond functional."