"The gospel of detachment is as well suited to a culture of excess as it is to a society of radical poverty. It thrives in circumstances in which one's wants are dangerous because they are surely going to be deprived - or because they are pulled in so many directions that they pose a threat to the integrity, the unity of one's self. Of course, wanting too much, wanting the wrong thing, wanting what you can't have is one definition of the human condition; we all have to learn how to make some liveable compromise between the always insatiable self and the always insufficient reality principle."

- Eva Hoffman  Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language