Ideal Conditions for Working

"When I thought of the ideal conditions for working, in other words, I looked at things from the perspective of someone not working, of someone on holiday, of a tourist in Taormina. I always had in mind the view that my desk would overlook, thereby overlooking the fact that the view from the desk is invisible when you are actually working, and forgetting that of the many genres of sentence I dislike there is none that I despise more than ones which proceed along the lines of ‘If I look up from my desk . . .’ The ideal conditions for working were actually the worst possible conditions for working."

~ Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence, 1997