“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness.
The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles.
The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o’clock in the morning.”
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.