" a personality is reduced to mere wax, a mere receiver of impressions; and this condition is the very negation of the basic drive in him—to rebel. It is no wonder that in middle age many such failed rebels, rebels turned self-conscious drones, aware of their susceptibility to intellectual vogues, adopt a mask of cynicism that cannot hide their more or less paranoiac sense of having been betrayed by life.” ’ While "

― John Fowles , The Magus