Perhaps the reality is in the suffering. But it can't be. Love promises happiness. Art promises happiness. Yet it isn't exactly a promise . . .

It had all been quite uncannily painless. I was left with a sense of not having suffered enough. Only sometimes in dreams did I experience certain horrors, glimpses of punishment which would perhaps yet find its hour.

Ludens was continually aware of his father's distress.

I've been so unhappy for years, so unhappy . . . I don't understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive.

He had always thought of himself as a muddler, a sufferer, a victim.

I must admit that I am in a state of utter wretchedness and have been for a long time. I didn't know that such extreme unhappiness could continue for so long.

Perhaps this 'dead' feeling was also brought on by an intensification of her old secret sorrow. Perhaps one day this sorrow might end. But she did not think it would end or see how it could end.

I would like to send you to hell.""My dear, I live in hell, and have done so since I was a small child.""Since I regained my mind I have thought, and dreamt too, of nothing but of killing you.""You can do it any time, if you don't mind going to prison.

Sometimes he felt like a victim constantly revived in order to suffer more.