'When we go to be psychoanalysed we are told that we must stop hating ourselves so violently. But in order to free us from this hatred, free us from this guilt, this feeling of panic, this silence, we are told we must live according to nature, that we must indulge our instincts, that we must follow our desires: that we must make a free choice of our lives. But to make a free choice of your life is not to live according to nature; it is to live unnaturally, because man is not always given a free choice; he does not choose the hour of his birth, or his face, or his parents, or his childhood; he does not normally choose the hour of his death. A man has no choice but to accept his destiny: and the only choice he is permitted is the choice between good and evil, between justice and injustice, between truth and lies.'
Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, p.115.
