The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the mo… - William Somerset Maugham

I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,' said Phillip. 'That's only a laborious form of idleness.'
But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?'
I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in him for his sake but for mine.'
Why do you read then?'
Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me and I can't get anythning more if I read it a dozen times. ...

Art... is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

Unless love is passion, it's not love, but something else; and passion thrives not on satisfaction, but on impediment.