In his short story "Rich Boy" (from All the Sad Young Men), F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." In 1936, Ernest Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro contained the rejoinder: "Yes, they have more money."

[Some sources cite this exchange as part of a face-to-face conversation. According to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Hemingway himself was once the butt of this wisecrack: "In 1936 Maxwell Perkins lunched with Hemingway and the critic Mary Colum. When Hemingway announced, 'I am getting to know the rich,' Mary Colum replied, 'The only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money.'"]

[In August 1940, Fitzgerald received what was to be his last royalty statement. It reported total sales of all of his titles of only 40copies. "Amount due author: $13.13." Fitzgerald's works have since been translated into 35 languagess and now routinely sell some 500,000 copies a year.]