" At length he threw ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ aside, and opened the door to listen to the night outside, advancing cautiously down the steps into the cloistered quadrangle. Looking up from the stone enclosure, he could see the sky full of innumerable trembling stars, and all he could hear was extravagant sounds at a distance—drunken howling from a far street, something that might have been a revolver shot, and, from somewhere in the College itself, the hysterical crying of a jazz record. Close to all was quiet: the slightest of winds breathed over the grass and around the stone pillars, while from the Master's garden came the restless sound of trees. He wondered if a time would ever come when these things would assure him and seem pleasant. "

― Philip Larkin , Jill