‘That’s it,’ James said, with nodding recognition. ‘It’s cuddling I want really as much as everything else. It’ll sound stupid to you, Willy, but over the last few weeks I’ve just felt… so out of it. I’ve gone so long without love and I’ve become simply so accustomed to it all, as if that’s how life is and evermore shall be–death–horror–amen. It struck me that I’ve turned into the archetypal middle-class intellectual out of touch with everything, just like someone in a Forster novel, and that was eighty years ago… It’s all very well being ironic, but then it keeps coming over me that no one wants me, the summer’s burning away, and no one makes a move for me, I don’t preoccupy anyone…’ He wailed a little but was unable to cry.

Hollinghurst, Alan. The Swimming Pool Library. New York: Vintage. 1989. p. 257.