<p class="quote">The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel that we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation&mdash;a book should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us. </p> 

Amen and amen and amen! From a letter of Franz Kafka, quoted in <em>The Savage God: A Study of Suicide</em> by A. Alvarez