i feel as though being proud and being self-congratulatory are two different things

and there's a limit to how much you can praise yourself for your art before it becomes grating, as well, and besides you do have to kind of look at it and see whether it really warrants the amount of praise you're giving it. you can be confident and still accept that your art isn't (yet) the greatest thing since sliced bread.

so basically john green has passed the limit between justifiably proud and kind of self-aggrandizing considering the objective quality of his work