So you are lean and mean and resourceful and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years you have become fascinated by how close you can walk without losing your balance. – Attributed to Richard M. Nixon

Each one of us is alone in the world… We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. – W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919