Tom's tips

Humankind cannot stand very much reality.
T. S. Eliot

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent", II
(The Sacred Wood, 1922)

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act

Falls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men