My Struggle: Book 4

by Karl Ove Knausgård

which meant that I would also have to work, but not all the time and not on something that would deplete all my energy and eat into my soul, leaving me like one of the middle-aged half-wits who guarded their hedges and peered across at their neighbors to see if their status symbols were as wonderful as their own.

But that was how it was, everyday life with its endless round of petty demands and obligations, petty conversations and arrangements, surrounded us like a fence.