floating scraps of stories

"And why is it, Andrew, that some people try all their lives to become writers or poets, even though they are too ashamed to show their work to anyone? Why do they keep on trying? Why do they write and write, putting their poems and stories away as soon as they're finished? Where does their dream come from...It is a dream of wholeness, and of beauty. All the yearning and all the unhappiness and all the sickness can be taken away by that vision. And the vision is real. I know."

Peter Ackroyd, Chatterton