" Until that point, I'd assumed that nearly everyone bore a certain amount of loneliness within them, it was just the human condition of being trapped inside one mind and body for a lifetime, so that whatever isolation I felt was normal and universal; but hearing Seger's lyrics, rather than identifying with someone else's expression of similar feelings, as art was supposed to do for its audience, I thought that there was a different quality to mine, it was singular and peculiar and grotesque, a lonely flavor of loneliness--but maybe, I also reasoned, that's what true loneliness was, its Tolstoyan uniqueness made it so, and the only way out was to define yours to someone else and hope they still accepted you, and the only lonelier fate than rejection was never exposing yourself to its possibility. "

― Teddy Wayne , Apartment