The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.

The remark contrasts conspicuous consumption with a writer’s more private, work-centered satisfactions. Vidal frames “making money” not as a gateway to luxury goods but as a way to buy time and professional support—here, the ability to generate multiple clean, “freshly typed” drafts. In the pre-digital era, retyping was laborious and costly; being able to afford repeated retyping implies a commitment to revision and craft. The quote also signals an identity claim: Vidal presents himself as someone whose real indulgence is the refinement of prose, suggesting that artistic control and productivity can be a more meaningful form of wealth than status symbols.