‘ We are oppressed at being ‘me’ — men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don’t want to write more from “Underground”.
The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here…’
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
‘I am angry, I am ill and I’m as ugly as sin,
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking’
— Howard Devoto, A Song From Under the Floorboards
