How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.
Philip LarkinThe poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It's more like a desire to separate a piece of one's experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.
Philip LarkinAs a child, I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn't like.
Philip Larkin