Merle's all-night illumination prolonged itself into an inescapable glow that began to keep him awake. - Thomas Pynchon

Man, I want to die, is all,' cried Ploy.
'Don't you know,' said Dahoud, 'that life is the most precious possession you have?'
'Ho, ho,' said Ploy through his tears. 'Why?'
'Because,' said Dahoud, 'without it, you'd be dead.

But a few choosing to venture deeper into the painful corridors of their affliction, found after a while that they could now grind and polish ever more exotic surfaces, hyperboloidial and even stranger, eventually including what we must term ‘imaginary’ shapes (which some preferred to term invisible).

If there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. Nothing so mystical. It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty ...little heads.