A man who finds himself among others is irritated because he
does not know why he is not one of the others.
In bed next to a girl he loves, he forgets that he does not know
why he is himself instead of the body he touches.
Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that
keeps him from screaming that he himself is the girl who
forgets his presence while shuddering in his arms.
Love or infantile rage, or a provincial dowager’s vanity, or
clerical pornography, or the diamond of a soprano bewilder
individuals forgotten in dusty apartments.
They can very well try to find each other; they will never find
anything but parodic images, and they will fall asleep as empty
as mirrors.
— Georges Bataille, The Solar Anus