"There is nothing stranger or more precarious than the relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and watch each other every day, even every hour, yet are compelled by convention or their own whim to maintain the appearance of indifference and unfamiliarity, to avoid any word or greeting. There arises between them a certain restlessness and frustrated curiosity, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally suppressed urge for acquaintanceship and mutual exhange, and in point of fact also a kind of tense respect. For people tend to love and honor other people so long as they are not in a position to pass judgement on them; and longing is the result of insufficient knowledge."
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice