Doctor Glas - Hjalmar Söderberg

We want to have everything, want to be everything. We want to know all the pleasures of happiness, and every depth of suffering. We want the pathos of action and the peace of the on looker. We desire both the desert's stillness and the uproar of the forum. At once we wish to be the thoughts of the thinker and the voice of the crowd; we want to be both melody and harmony. At once! How can such a thing be posssible!

"I want to ride on horseback and take the boat."


Now I sit at my open window, writing - for whom? Not for any friend or mistress. Scarcely for myself, even. I do not read today what I wrote yesterday; nor shall I read this tomorrow. I write simply so my hand can move, my thoughts move of their own accord. I write to kill a sleepless hour. Why can't I sleep? After all, I've coommitted no crime.