I am not able, and I do not want, to abandon the world-view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in useless [sic] scraps of information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
(Louis Macneice, to whom I return again and again.)
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird