She felt herself needing more and more sleep. When she awoke in the morning, she thought of when she might lie down again - and when she would sleep.… - Susan Sontag

Nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning - that meaning being invariably a moralistic one.

Nothing can match the elation of the chronically melancholy when joy arrives. But before being allowed to arrive, it must lay siege to the weary heart. Let me in, it mews, it bellows. The heart must be forced.

Indeed, the very first acknowledgment (as far as I am aware) of the attraction of mutilated bodies occurs in a founding description of mental conflict. It is a passage in The Republic, Book IV, where Plato’s Socrates describes how our reason may be overwhelmed by an unworthy desire, which drives the self to become angry with a part of its nature.