It is from the margins that we can see the center more clearly; it is from the perspective of what Michel Foucault once characterized as the “perverse implantation” that we may better observe what we call normal. In the state of crisis induced by the pain of being alone, it is more likely that we will clearly see the motives and ends of the lonely self, even when that self moves from despair to happier ways of being.

— Thomas Dumm, Loneliness as a Way of Life