"What mainly worries me, if you'll excuse my speaking on my own affairs for the moment, is a strengthening suspicion that in my character there is an antipathy between 'art' and 'life.'  I find that once I 'give in' to another person, as I have given in not altogether voluntarily, but almost completely, to Ruth,* it impossible to achieve that mental 'clenching' that crystallises a pattern and keeps it still while you draw it.  It's very easy to float along in a semi-submerged way, dissipating one's talent for pleasing by amusing and being affectionate to the other --easy because the returns are instant and delightful -- but I find, myself, that this letting-in of a second person spells death to perception and the desire to express, as well as the ability.  Time & time again I feel that before I write anything else at all I must drag myself out of the water, shake myself dry and sit down on a lonely rock to contemplate glittering loneliness.  Marriage, of course (since you mentioned marriage), is impossible if one wants to do this."

~ Philip Larkin.  Letter to J. B. Sutton, 7 April 1946.  English poet, novelist (Aug. 9, 1922 - Dec. 2, 1985)  Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940 - 1985.  Edited by Anthony Thwaite.  Faber and Faber Limited, 1992.
*Ruth was Larkin's first girlfriend.  Met in 1945.  Split in 1950.