The loneliness of a tyrant

Lonely! What do you know of it? The loneliness of teenage poets and impotent men. You babble away, but you don't realize that one is never alone. The same load of the future and the past crushes us all. Those we have killed are always with us. But they are no great trouble. It's those we have loved, those who loved us and whom we did not love; regrets, desires, bitterness and sweetness, whores and gods, the celestial gang! Always, always with us... Alone! If only in this ghoul-haunted wilderness of mine, I could enjoy real silence with only the rustling of a tree... Solitude? No, Scipio, mine is full of gnashings of teeth, hideous with jarring sounds and voices.
-Caligula (Albert Camus)