‘This then has been going on all the time without our knowing it!—this incessant making up of shapes and casting them down, this buffeting of clouds together, and drawing vast trains of ships and waggons from North to South, this incessant ringing up and down of curtains of light and shade, this interminable experiment with gold shafts and blue shadows, with veiling the sun and unveiling it, with making rock ramparts and wafting them away—this endless activity, with the waste of Heaven knows how many million horse power of energy, has been left to work its will year in year out…. Ought not someone to write to The Times? Use should be made of it. One should not let this gigantic cinema play perpetually to an empty house.’

From the essay ‘On Being Ill’ written by the English author Virginia Woolf in 1925 while in bed after experiencing a nervous breakdown.