The more I write the less substance do I see in my work, … It is tolerably awful. And I face it, I face it but the fright is growing on me. My fortitude is shaken by the view of the monster. It does not move; its eyes are baleful; it is as still as death itself — and it will devour me. Its stare has eaten into my soul already deep, deep.

letter to Edward Garnett written in March 1899, published in Frederick R Karl and Laurence Davies, eds., The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, vol. 2, p. 177.