All human beings contain within them a self-destructive urge. It typically manifests itself as addiction—food, drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, and violence (because that, too, becomes addictive)—but even the most disciplined of us will sometimes hear the call of compulsion, and see for an instant the world through craving eyes.

It’s the voice that speaks in your head as you walk along a cliff edge, before offering a vision of your body tumbling to the rocks below. The more vulnerable you are, the more insistent it becomes. The only ones untroubled by it are the dead.

Connolly, John. The Furies: A Thriller (Charlie Parker Book 20) (p. 96).