I’m outstanding only in my essential politeness. […] But if beneath charm lies exhaustion, beneath exhaustion lies a certain rage. I detect a wrongness everywhere. Within and Without, to quote a lyric. It would be misleading to say I’m screaming inside, for if I was, I’d soon enough find a way to scream aloud. Rather, the politeness infests a layer between me and myself, the name of wrongness going not only unexpressed but unknown. Intuited only. Forbidden perhaps. Perkus would have called me inchoate. He wouldn’t have meant it kindly.
— Chronic City, Jonathan Letham
