I have always been an admirer, I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be witho… - Thomas Mann

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

Like any lover, he desired to please; suffered agonies at the thought of failure.

Passionate — that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for sake of experience. Passion, that is self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment.