"...the total number of galaxies in the universe seems to be in the region of ten billion, and that each of them has about a hundred billion stars the size of the sun. These numbers are so absurd that I strangely find myself in a good mood. It's all so immense. I think Paul feels a bit like this as well. There is so little I can do to make a difference. It is liberating."

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A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. . . . Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden.

— Thomas Mann