"Johnson has the best phrase for it. In one of his letters, he writes that ‘in the deaths of those close to us, the continuity of being is lacerated’. The continuity of being. The human personality is not an object, it’s a process, a constant state of becoming, that depends on a web of interdependencies, binding us to one another with invisible filaments, to our time, to memories and possessions, and back to our changing selves. And even that image probably overstates the solidity and integrity of the human personality. Strip a person away from the relationships that constitute their identity, the friends, the loved ones, the familiar sounds, and the outcome is bound to be breakdown and madness."
--Marcel Theroux, Strange Bodies
