“I’m very conscious of my decline in popularity, but I don’t permit it to stop me because I have the example of so many playwrights before me. I know the dreadful notices Ibsen got. And O’Neill — he had to die to make ‘Moon’ successful. And to me it has been providential to be an artist, a great act of providence that I was able to turn my borderline psychosis into creativity — my sister Rose did not manage this. So I keep writing. I am sometimes pleased with what I do — for me, that’s enough.”
— Tennessee Williams, interviewed in 1981
And we like it too.
That is a great quote.
Popularity for artists will always be a crapshoot. All anyone really has a right to ask is to be given the opportunity to express their creative impulses.
Anything beyond that is gravy.