"If you do not succumb to despair, you succumb to life. It is the worst of all the losses. The anguish is weathered by time, the intolerable becomes bearable, the pain mutates into a mere background ache. It is the moment when life goes on, when you know the truth, the outcome, the fact, and yet the breath continues, sleep overcomes you at night, your eyes open in the morning and you rise with the day, you eat from hunger, you drink from thirst and find there is relief and even transient pleasure in both. You have not died from despair, and therefore you will live. After a while, you do not even notice how terrible such a loss of loss is."
                                                                                            -- Jenny Diski, 'Only Human'