Spent in Flight

         Man comes into the world a blind, groping mite. He knows hunger and the fear of noise and of falling. His life is spent in flight - flight from hunger and from the thunderbolt of destiny. From his moment of birth he begins to fall through the whistling air of Time ; down, down into a chasm of darkness.....we come like a breath of wind over the fields of morning. We go like a lamp flame caught by a blast from a darkened window. In between we journey from table to table, from battle to bottle, from bed to bed. We suck, we chew, we swallow, we lick, we try to mash life into us like an am-am-amoeba God damn it !

excerpt from
Nightmare Alley
William Lindsay Gresham
1946

                https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/97110.William_Lindsay_Gresham