Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the exper… - Cyril Connolly

I am now forced to admit that anxiety is my true condition, occasionally intruded on by work, pleasure, melancholy or despair.

"A rune for the very bored: when very bored say to yourself: "It was during the next twenty minutes that there occurred one of those tiny incidents which revolutionizes the whole course of our life and alter the face of history. Truly we are the playthings of enormous fates.

A child, left to play alone, says of quite an easy thing, 'Now I am going to to do something very difficult'. Soon, out of vanity, fear and emptiness, he builds up a world of custom, convention and myth in which everything must be just so; certain doors are one-way streets, certain trees sacred, certain paths taboo. Then along comes a grown-up or a more robust child; they kick over the imaginary wall, climb the forbidden tree, regard the difficult as easy and the private world is destroyed. The instinct to create myth, to colonize reality with the emotions, remains. The myths become tyrannies until they are swept away, when we invent new tyrannies to hide our suddenly perceived nakedness. Like caddis-worms or like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.