Now and then I say it over silently to myself. . . . I wish that someone or something would affect me so that I can become real. . . . To hear a human voice and be sure that it comes from someone who is made just like I am. To touch a pair of lips. Not to have to live through the hideous moment needed for my experience to check that I’ve really felt a pair of lips. Reality would be to know that a joy is a joy and above all that a pain has to be a pain.

Ingmar Bergman, Face to Face