Meglio scrivere per se stessi e non avere un pubblico, che scrivere per il pubblico e non avere se stessi. - Cyril Connolly

Popular success is a palace built for a writer by publishers, journalists, admirers, and professional reputation makers, in which a silent army of termites, rats, dry rot, and death-watch beetles are tunnelling away, till, at the very moment of completion, it is ready to fall down.

...art is made by the alone for the alone… The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication...

It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.