Once he had seen a reproduction of an engraving called “Hell of Loneliness” and had thought it curious. In it a man was floating unsteadily in the air, his eyes wide with fright, and the space around him, far from being empty, was so filled with the semi-transparent shadows of dead persons that he could scarcely move. The dead, each with a different expression, were trying to push one another away, talking ceaselessly to the man. What was this “Hell of Loneliness”? he wondered. Perhaps they had misnamed it, he thought then, but now he could understand it very well. Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.

-Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo.