Will Irwin: When I began, I liked best to write in the first person. Now I prefer the third. Why, I can not say exactly. Probably because your interests increase with years, and when writing in the first person you have limited yourself to the interests, experiences and observations of but one character.
Frederick J. Jackson: Third person. Simpler, usually more effective, is easier for me. Have written only two stories in first person.
Mary Johnston: Depends on what you're doing.
John Joseph: I very much prefer writing in the third person, but when it comes to an old-time western story—well, I have lived these things and the detached third person doesn't seem to belong, nor conventional English. I have heard these people talk every day for too many years, have heard too many camp-fire tales, I suppose, and the more a writer polishes his story the less real it seems.
Lloyd Kohler: The third person. I don't like that eternal "I." Still, I have read many authors who could handle that very same "I" convincingly. More power to them!
Harold Lamb: The first person is a little more fun. Because it gives a freer hand in description and more play to emotion.
Sinclair Lewis: Third, less (obviously) egotistical.
Hapsburg Liebe: I prefer writing in the third person because in the first I can't keep the perpendicular pronoun sufficiently down.
E. P. Lyle, Jr.: In the first person. Comes easier, less formal, your reader not a reader but seemingly a friend on the other side of the hearth. I'd recommend it to a beginner. Also tell him to forget he is writing literature, and to keep in attitude of writing a letter.
Rose Macaulay: Third. Because I dislike reading stories told in the first.