'Some of them ask him with pity, and some ask him with suspicion: the first group feel sorry for him, because they think that singlehood is his decision, a defiant violation of a fundamental law of adulthood.
Either way, being single is forty is different from being single at thirty, and with every year it becomes less understandable, less enviable, and more pathetic, more inappropriate.'
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life, p.304.
