The Plague - Albert Camus

And what they were then could not satisfy them, discontented with their present, enemies of their past and deprived of the future, they were very similar to those who were forced by justice or human hatred to live behind bars. The only way of escaping this unbearable recess was to rerun the trains again in imagination and fill the hours with the repetitive chimes of a bell that was nonetheless clinging to silence.

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