"He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others - the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad."

Fra Everything is illuminated av Jonathan Safran Foer