" At sixteen I began to think of adopting a profession, and successively tried my hand at everything. I turned soldier but was not brave enough; I became a monk but was not devout enough, and besides, I could not drink hard enough. In despair, I apprenticed myself to a carpenter, but was not strong enough. I had a much greater fancy to be a school-master. True, I had not learned to read; but what of that? After some time I discovered that, owing to some deficiency or other, I was fit for nothing, and therefore set up for a poet. This is a profession to which a man who is a vagabond may always betake himself, and it is better than to thieve, as some young rogues of my acquaintance advised me to do. "

― Victor Hugo