"In the flat that my body inhabits, the silence is sometimes so heavy that one has the sensation of wading through it. Looking up from the book to hear the soft spondees of the gas fire sounding across nothingness, I am suddenly aware of the lives potential in me which are wasting themselves. It is a fancy of mine, that each of us contains many lives, potential lives. They are laid up inside us, shall we say, like so many rows of shining metals-- railway lines. Riding along one set toward the terminus, we can be aware of those other lines, alongside us, on which we might have traveled--on whicht we might yet travel if only we had the strength to change. You yawn? This ist simply my-way of saying I am lonely. It is in these movements, looking up to find the whole night gathered at my elbow, that I question the life I am leading, and find it a little lacking. The quiet statement of a woman's laugh, breaking from the servants' rooms across the silence, afflicts me. I consider myself gravely in mirrors these days. I wear my skullcap a trifle grimly, as if in affirmation of the life I have chosen. Yet at night sometimes I am aware, as of an impending toothache, of the gregarious fiber of me. Dear me. This is becoming fine writing in the manner of the Sit-wells. But let me discuss myself a little in green ink, since no one takes the trouble to do so in words of more than one syllable. In the first place, my name is not Death, as it ought to be..."
(Lawrence Durrell: The Black Book)
