"One might as well make no mistake about it, human beings have nothing to say to each other; they only tell each other their own personal troubles and that's a fact. Each for himself, the world for all men. They try to shift their own unhappiness off onto somebody else when they make love, but it doesn't come off and, do what they will, they have to stick to the whole lot themselves; so then they begin again and try to palm it off once more. 'You're a very pretty girl,' they say. And life takes a hold on them again, until the next time they try the same little trick. 'You're such a pretty girl...'

And between whiles you boast of having managed to be rid of your unhappiness, but every one knows, don't they, that you've not done any such thing but are just as miserable as you well can be. As you grow uglier and uglier and more repulsive, playing this game as you grow old, you can't even conceal your unhappiness any longer, your failure; and in the end your face has become only an ugly expression which takes twenty, thirty or more years to come up from your stomach onto your face. That is what a man will achieve, that and that alone, -an ugly expression which he has spent a lifetime making and often even then hasn't managed to finish off properly, because of how difficult and complicated an expression it would have to be to reflect his real soul without missing anything out."

-from Journey To The End Of The Night, Louis-Ferdinand Celine