Since the early years of my youth, I've believed that each of us has our own no man’s land, where we are the total master of ourselves. There is a life visible to all, and there is another that belongs only to us, of which no one knows anything. This doesn’t mean at all that, from an ethical standpoint, one is moral and the other immoral, or, from a policing standpoint, one is lawful and the other unlawful. Simply put, people occasionally escape any control, live in freedom and mystery, alone or in the company of someone, even if it's just an hour a day, or an evening a week, or a day a month; they live this free and secret life from one evening (or day) to the next, and these hours have their own continuity. If a man doesn't make use of this right or is deprived of it by external circumstances, one fine day he’ll discover with astonishment that he has never truly encountered himself in life.
Nina Berberova, The accompanist, 1990