The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love, Broke out, to show Its bright incipience sailing above, Still promising to solve, and satisfy, And… - Philip Larkin

I think … someone might do a little research on some of the inherent qualities of sex – its cruelty, its bullyingness, for instance. It seems to me that bending someone else to your will is the very stuff of sex, by force or neglect if you are male, by spitefulness or nagging or scenes if you are female. And what's more, both sides would sooner have it that way than not at all. I wouldn't. And I suspect that means not that I can enjoy sex in my own quiet way but that I can't enjoy it at all. It's like rugby football: either you like kicking & being kicked, or your soul cringes away from the whole affair. There's no way of quietly enjoying rugby football.

- to start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.

But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats.