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.....The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, particular to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. When we examine the moments, acts, and statements of all kinds of people—not only the grief and ecstasy of the greatest poets, but also the huge unhappiness of the average soul, as evidenced by the innumerable strident words of abuse, hatred, contempt, mistrust, and scorn that forever grate upon our ears as the manswarm passes us in the streets—we find, I think, that they are all suffering from the same thing. The final cause of their complaint is lonliness.
..........— Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American novelist. Contribution, "The Anatomy of Loneliness," The American Mercury Reader edited by Lawrence E. Spivak, Charles Angoff (October 1941).
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