There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth — yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams.
“Why does language subvert me, subvert my seniority, my medals, my oldness, whenever it gets a chance? What does language have against me—me that has been good to it, respecting its little peculiarities and nicilosities, for sixty years? …What do ‘years’ have against me? Why have they stuck stones in my kidneys, devaluated my tumulosity, retracted my hair? …Where does ‘hair’ go when it dies?”
Donald Barthelme | “A Picture History of the War”