A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for the instinctual drives must be… - Cyril Connolly

So wrote Pater, calling an art-for-art's sake muezzin to the faithful from the topmost turret of the ivory tower.

Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.

No opinions, no ideas, no real knowledge of anything, no ideals, no inspiration; a fat, slothful, querulous, greedy, impotent carcass; a stump, a decaying belly washed up on the shore... Always tired, always bored, always hurt, always hating.