"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life,
and beyond which life cannot rise.
And such is the paradox of living,
this ecstasy comes when one is most alive,
and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living,
comes to the artist, caught up
and out of himself in a sheet of flame;
it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field
and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck,
leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry,
straining after the food that was alive
and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight."
- Jack London