Winter of Artifice

'To imagine was far more terrible then reality, because it took place in a void, it was untestable. There were no hands with which to strike or defend oneself in that inner chamber of ghostly tortures. But in living the realisation summoned energies, forces, courage, arms and legs, to fight with so that war almost became joy. To fight a real sorrow, a real loss, a real insult, a real disillusion, a real treachery was infinitely less difficult than to spend a night without sleep struggling with ghosts. The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us, and it knows where to strike us where it hurts. It knows the vulnerable spot, and life does not, and lovers do not because seldom do they have the imagination equal to the task.'

Anais Nin