"I thought about life, about my life, the
embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside
tables, I thought about my small victories and everything I’d seen destroyed.
I’d swum through mink coats on my parents’ bed while they hosted downstairs,
I’d lost the only person with whom I could have spent my only life, I’d left
behind a thousand tons of marble from which I could have released sculptures, I
could have released myself from the marble of myself, I’d experienced joy, but
not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify
the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I
thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and
pathetic, how helpless in the universe."
― Jonathan Safran Foer