Irving Stone on some uses of failure

I’m a failed playwright. I’m a failed short story writer. I was a second-class mystery writer…And all of a sudden my failures turn into great, great virtues and values. From my playwriting, I learned how to stage scenes under a proscenium with you not in the audience but up on the stage as a central character. From my detective stories I learned how to weave suspense. From the short stories I learned how to foreshorten. And I taught myself how to research…

I think this is the reason for any success that I have: I keep demanding to find things.

—Irving Stone, author of The Agony and the Ecstasy