“Some things we never know we need until we find them. And now, when I looked back on my life, it seemed empty and idle, if only because she’d not been in it.

All my life, I’d shied away from human company, never sharing my thoughts with a soul. How pointless this seemed now, and how absurd!

I’d thought that it was life itself that had ground me down – that my sadness stemmed from spiritual malaise. After spending two hours with a book, and finding it more pleasurable than two years of real life, I’d remember again that life had no meaning, and sink back into despair.”