Year after year of dirty snow and bitter winds…houses and whole districts of people who aren’t really unhappy, but worse, who are neither happy nor unhappy; people who are ugly because they’re neither ugly nor beautiful; creatures that are dismally neutral, who long without longings as though they’re unconscious, unconsciously suffering from being alive. But I was aware of the sickness of life. Perhaps because I’m more intelligent, or just the opposite, less intelligent, not so wise, not so resigned, not so patient. Is that a fault or a virtue?

— Eugene Ionesco, The Killer (via here)