"It's all so painfully empty and lonesome... I don't think I can stand
any more of it... the whole dreadful way we are born, die, and are
never missed. The fact there is *nobody*... nobody really... We come
out of a yawning tomb of flesh and sink back finally into another tomb.
What is the point of it all? Who thought up this sickening circle of
flesh and blood? We come into the world bleeding and cut and our bones
half-crushed only to emerge and suffer more torment, mutilation, and
then at the last lie down in some hole in the ground forever. Who could
have thought it up, I wonder?"
-- James Purdy
