Waterloo Sunset

There was no book I mentioned which he could not discuss and usually quote from, among them Wordsworth's sonnets ("The world is too much with us; late and soon/Getting and spending we lay waste our powers"); Conrad's Lord Jim ("It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand grasp"); Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel ("Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?") Romain Gary's The Roots of Heaven ("The whole philosophy of that book is summed up in one sentence in it - 'Dog's aren't enough any more; men need elephants'")