" For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between those heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to room themselves in the sold earth of their distress. "

― Albert Camus , The Plague