Madonna in a Fur Coat (Penguin Modern Classics)

live in the same places was not to live as he did.

It was almost as if he had withdrawn to another time – a place that was his and his alone – and nothing I could do would bring him back.

Though I did not know what I was learning from this silent man walking alongside me, I was certain that I was learning far more than I would have done from a teacher of many years.

When we walked side by side, did I not feel his humanity most profoundly?

For wasn’t there sufficient pleasure to be had in silent patience – in viewing others’ vices with compassion and enjoying their vulgarities?

It was the yawning void inside them that drove them to deride, scorn and ridicule others, for this was their only source of satisfaction, their only way of knowing who they were.

How absurd they were, the games we played in the name of friendship; did empty, artificial jockeying of this sort bear any relation whatsoever to the real thing?

The more I needed my friends, the more I longed to run away.

That said, we rarely seek that which we do not expect to find.

The essence of life is in solitude – wouldn’t you agree?