Here’s yet another excerpt from Isaac Asimov’s autobiography. The year is 1954 and his writing income is greatly outstripping what he’s earning teaching at Boston University.

I then picked up the galleys of Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus at Doubleday, and finally went off to dinner with Bob and Ginny Heinlein. I hadn’t seen either of them in nine years, not since the end of the Navy Yard days, and this was the first occasion on which I met them as a married couple.

While I suppose Bob was glad to see me on my own account, he had a purpose for the dinner. He knew that Pohl had quit the agency business and he also knew that I had been working agentless since then. As it happened, Bob drew me aside to urge me to become a client of his own agent. He told me very earnestly that his income had quintupled, thanks to his agent. I thought of my own writing income quintupling, and the thought of fifty thousand dollars per year had a vague Olympian quality about it that was endlessly appealing.

I wanted no agent—on principle. Money could not move me.

At least, that was the theory. But fifty thousand dollars a year! I could feel my principles softening about the edges, and I was glad that the agent would be joining us at dinner. Maybe—if he seemed pleasant—and competent—maybe—just maybe—well, after all, why not…

My principles were melting further.

What I needed was something that would jolt me back to my right mind, and fortunately it was supplied me.

I was seated next to the agent’s wife, a very talkative woman. She talked about everything in a stream-of-consciousness manner that would have quickly driven me insane if I had listened to her. Fortunately, I had long since learned that one can detach one’s self completely in such cases and merely make little moaning sounds at odd intervals to indicate one’s attention is riveted, and the speaker is thoroughly satisfied.

I had ordered Shrimp Diabolo and was squaring away, quite prepared to eat with gusto, when the agent’s wife, eyeing my dish with interest, said, “Well, what have you there, my, that looks good, I’ve always been interested in shrimp, been eating them ever since I was so high, but I don’t seem to recognize this way of cooking them, it smells good, what do they call it, where’s the menu, I wonder why I didn’t notice it on the menu when I was ordering, does it taste good, let me see what it tastes like…”

And at this point, she speared one of my shrimps and carried it off.

I stared at her with horror. I hate having anyone sample my plate. I don’t sample yours, you don’t sample mine is my way of looking at meals.

There are some principles that even the thought of fifty thousand a year won’t affect. Once she had speared my shrimp there was no longer a chance in Hades that Bob’s agent could have me as a client. My heart hardened, my mind closed, and I settled back to my mere ten thousand a year.

And I never again got even that close to considering a literary agent.