"Given the miserable state I'm in, it amuses people to waken cheap hopes in me. One thus becomes as morbidly sensitive to hope as somebody with rheumatism is to inflamation. It is very pleasant to know a person who, in such circumstances, raises no hopes - even if this is only because she is too lazy to write a letter. This person, then, is you - and you therefore stand on one of the few elevated spots still left in my rather inundated 'soul.' Hence, your not writing meant almost as much to me as your voice would, if I could hear it again after so many years ."
- Walter Benjamin in a letter to Asja Lacis, 1935