"Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend all her time thinking about it... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's claim of life was intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance."
From Atonement, a novel by Ian McEwan.
