It Comes at a Cost

'We would all like to be simpler, Paul,' she says, 'every one of us.  Particularly as we near the end.  But we are complicated creatures, we human beings.  That is our nature.  You want me to be simpler.  You want to be simpler yourself, more naked.  Well, I gaze in wonderment, believe me, upon your efforts to strip yourself down.  But it comes at a cost, the simple heart you so desire, the simple way of seeing the world...'

-J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man

City of Angels