“Her Enlightenment is perfect,—‘And we are nothing, you and me’—she pokes at my chest, ‘Jew—Jew—’ (Mexican saying ‘You’) ‘—and me’—pointing at herself—‘We are nothing. Tomorrar we may be die, and so we are nothing—’ I agree with her, I feel the strangeness of that truth, I feel we are two empty phantoms of light or like ghosts in old haunted-house stories diaphanous and precious and white and not-there,—She says ‘I know you want to sleep.’”

—Jack Kerouac, Tristessa, 1960.