"here i'll make a confession, or rather two.  the first is that when i look back through my life i can't honestly say that anything i've ever done has given me quite such a kick as fishing.  everything else has been a bit of a flop in comparison, even women.  i don't set up to be one of those men that don't care about women.  i've spent plenty of time chasing them, and i would even now if i had the chance.  still, if you gave me the choice of having any woman you care to name, but i mean any woman, or catching a ten-pound carp, the carp would win every time.  and the other confession is that after i was sixteen i never fished again.

why?  because that's how things happen.  because in this life we lead...we don't do the things we want to do.  it isn't because we're always working...it's because there's some devil in us that drives us to and fro on everlasting idiocies.  there's time for everything except the things worth doing.  think of something you really care about.  then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you've actually spent doing it.  and then calculate the time you've spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway junctions, swapping dirty stories, and reading newspapers."

Coming up for Air

George Orwell  

(an excellent study, if ever there was one, of  the sarcastic soul, written in the first person. - sk)