Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit - a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.

Nothing perhaps increases by indulgence more than a desultory habit of reading, especially under such opportunities of gratifying it.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.

The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.

I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste.

I seek in the reading of my books only to please myself by an irreproachable diversion; or if I study it is for no other science than that which treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and live well.

Writing is its own reward.

The Proximity of a Desirable Thing Tempts One to Overindulgence. On That Path Lies Danger.

For what is the self-complacent man but a slave to his own self-praise.

...self-praise is self-debasement...

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one... If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.

On one side self-indulgence presses me hard; on another covetousness strives to make an inroad; my belly wishes to be a God to me, in place of Christ,

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