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"If you have talent, it will be a fight to the death, for your best chance is to have none. At this moment your conscience is clear, but it will give way before those who hold your success in their hands; when a word from one of them is a matter of life and death to you, and he will not say that word. Believe me, the successful writer is more insolent, more hard-hearted towards newcomers than the most ruthless publisher. The publisher is only afraid of losing money, but the author is afraid of a possible rival; the publisher shows you the door, but the author will crush the life out of you. To write good books, my poor boy, you must draw tenderness, vitality, the sap of life, from your own heart's blood at every dip of the pen, and put your very soul into the passions, sentiments, and phrases of your work. Yes supposing you write instead of acting, sing instead of battling with the world, and put all your loves and hates into your books; supposing you keep your wealth for your style, your money and fine clothes for your characters, while you walk about the streets of Paris in rags, happy to think that you have rivalled the Registrar of Births by bringing into existence an individual called Adolphe, or Corinna, or Clarissa, or René or Manon; when you have ruined your life and your digestion in order to give life to this creation of yours, you will see it condemned, betrayed, sold, and swept into the back waters of oblivion by the journalists, and disregarded by your best friends."

–Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions, p. 255