For the past few days, I have been thinking about a line that I read somewhere, but I couldn't remember exactly the line or where I had read it. Then yesterday, it suddenly came to me that it is from The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham -- his book that is a highly fictionalized retelling of the life of Paul Gauguin.

My life has been nothing like the Stickland character's life -- or like Paul Gauguin's (well, there is that whole Polynesian island thing, but...) I certainly don't think that I aroused "detestation" in my former associates (although I might be flattering myself about that). But, nevertheless, living here in our little forgotten village in the hills, I think that the thing we have found, most of all, is sympathy. Although Jonathan and I are queer fish, they are used to queer fish and the holes here are all any sort of shape. We never expected sympathy, but somehow we have found it.