I was a puppet on a string. -Boris Becker, tennis star

• I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug into.-Emest Hemingway • The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century.-Viktor Frankl3 • I used to say: “There is a God-shaped hole in me.” For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important. -Salman Rushdie, Indian-English novelist • Just consider the mass neurotic syndrome so pervasive in the younger generation: there is ample empirical evidence that the three facets of this syndrome-depression, aggression, addiction-are due to what is called in logotherapy “the existential vacuum,” a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.-Viktor Frankl4 • The world is fading, not filling.-Thomas Watson5 • I’d like to know I what this show I is all about I before its out.-Piet Hein, Danish poet6