from Neil Gainman

I watched my peers , and my friends, and the ones
who were older than me and watch how miserable 
some of them were: I'd listen to them telling me
that they couldn't envisage a world where they 
did what they had always wanted to do any more
because now they had to earn a certain amount
every month just to keep where they were. They 
couldn't go and do the things that mattered, and 
that they had really wanted to do ; and that seemed 
as a big tragedy as any problem of failure.