One after another of his old friends and comrades fell back and vanished from his ken, for he lost interest in them when he saw less and less differe… - Jens Peter Jacobsen

Jacobsen once jestingly compared himself to the sloth (det beromte Dovendyr Ai-ar) which needed two years to climb
to the top o f a tree. It was necessary for him to withdraw absolutely from the world and to retire, as it were, within the character he wished to portray before he could set pen to paper.

Hanna Astrup Larsen (Introduction to Marie Grubbe, New York 1917)

I don't know how it is, but I am so tired of commonplace happiness and commonplace goals.

...he looked so strange and absentminded; quite obviously he had just been reading a book, one could tell that from the expression in his eyes, from his hair, from the abstracted way in which he managed his hands.