“Maybe some of you know politicians. Maybe you hang out with them, went to school with them, exchange Christmas cards with them. I’m guessing not, though. Politicians tend not to hang out with people like you, almost by definition. Typically, someone interested enough in the arts to be reading the Believer has spent a lot of time doing things that disqualify you not only from a career in politics,  but from even knowing people who have a career in politics. While you were smoking weed, sleeping around, listening to Pavement, reading novels, watching old movies, and generally pissing away every educational opportunity ever given to you, they were knocking on doors, joining societies, reading the Economist, and being very, very careful about avoiding people and situations that might embarrass them later. They are the people who were knocking on your door five minutes after you arrived at college, asking for your vote in the forthcoming student-representative election; you thought they were creeps, and laughed at them behind their backs. Meanwhile, they thought you were unserious and unfocused, and patronized you irritatingly if you ever had cause to be in the same room. I hope that, however old you are, you have already done enough to kill any serious political ambition. If you haven’t wasted huge chunks of your life on art, booze, and soft drugs, then you’ve wasted huge chunks of your life and we don’t want you around here. Go away.”

Nick Horby, the Believer, March/April 2011