"At present I'm in lodgings, and while they're quite good as far as lodgings go I can't ignore the blasted RADIO which seems a feature of everyone's life these days, and it prevents me from sitting thinking and scribbling in the evenings, yet if I grumbled my complaint would be regarded as eccentric as a complaint against the traffic or the birds or the children outside. Do you have radios in Japan? or can you sit long silk-colored evenings wrapped in a cocoon of silence sipping sake, or whatever it is, while the hours pass over as lightly as glances? If so, me for there. It is on now, subjecting me to its pathological highpitched burble, damn it. Excuse this outpouring. Obviously I ought to live out in the moors somewhere."
~ Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985) English novelist, poet, librarian. In a letter to Dennis Enright, April 27, 1955. Selected Letters of Philip Larkin 1940 - 1985, edited by Anthony Thwaite.
