"a lonely man thinks of nothing but friendship, just as a repressed man thinks of nothing but flesh. if matthew had been granted a wish by a guardian angel, he would have requested a machine, one yet to be invented, permitting its owner to ascertain where each of his friends was at any given moment, what he was doing and with whom. he belonged to the race which loiters beneath a loved one's window late at night and endeavors to decipher shadows flitting across a venetian blind."
— Gilbert Adair (The Dreamers)