My sweet, I do not mean to upset you in writing this, but I want to tell you that within us, as within the nature of every person's soul there is an emptiness and we constantly seek to find that and those in order to escape from being alone. This always has been so, and always the weight of loneliness is with us, and for this reason we think of this thing or that so as not to be left alone.

p. 132: in a letter to his sister Vartush Mooradian, after Mai 1938 - from 'Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009)