David Mitchell
:: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
If only, Shiroyama dreams, human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders.
'My uncle would quote Luther: "Whilst friends show us what we can do, it is our enemies who show us what we must."'
This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and this is itself.