“He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.”

“Most of us plateau when we lose the tension between where we are and where we ought to be.”

“He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.”

“Most people, he muses, they're trying to escape from boredom, but I'm trying to get into the thick of boredom.”

“But no: he was empty, he was confronted by a vast anger, a desperate anger, he saw it and could almost have touched it. But it was inert - if it were to live and find expression and suffer, he must lend it his own body. It was other people's anger. "Swine!" He clenched his fists, he strode along, but nothing came, the anger remained external to himself.”

“It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were.”