“When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling, into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow; it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.”

—Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.