Yevgeny Zamyatin — We [544]

It was essentially an unnatural sight: imagine a human finger cut off from the whole, from the hand—a separate human finger, running, stooped and bobbing, up and down, along the glass pavement. I was that finger. — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 544

Note

A stark, alienated metaphor for isolation within a totalitarian collective, reducing the individual human body to a detached, mechanical part.