"Today I have been reading Of No Importance - Rom Landau's diary of February-October 1939. Many things in it I understand so well - the reluctance to sit down and begin writing so that one finds oneself doing all sorts of unnecessary tasks to postpone that moment of starting. And also the feeling that no day is really satisfactory if one hasn't done some sort of work - preferably a few pages of writing, but anyway something useful. Why is it that one is still surprised to discover that other people feel these things too?" (Diary entry, 7 April 1940.) (Pym, A very private eye. Macmillan, 1984. p. 102.)