“Why don’t you laugh? Why d’you look at me like that? That’s how I am. There’s a devil in me who shouts, and I do what he says. Whenever I feel I’m choking with some emotion, he says: ‘Dance!’ and I dance. And I feel better! Once, when my little Dimitraki died, in Chalcidice, I got up as I did a moment ago and I danced. The relations and friends who saw me dancing in front of the body rushed up to stop me. ‘Zorba has gone mad!’ they cried, ‘Zorba has gone mad!’ But if at that moment I had not danced, I should really have gone mad– from grief. Because it was my first son and he was three years old and I could not bear to lose him. You understand what I’m saying, boss, don’t you– or am I talking to myself?”

–Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek, p. 72.