“Hell is other people,” wrote…

• • Friedrich Nietzsche
• • Aldous Huxley
• • Jean-Paul Sartre
• • Henry David Thoreau

Hell is made by people, that’s true, but only other people? Sartre complained that the famous line from his play No Exit was constantly misunderstood. His intended meaning was that you’re in hell if you rely on others’ opinion of you. This both resembles and differs from the idea that you make your own hell and can break out of it if you choose. The play is titled No Exit—or Huis Clos in the original, meaning “closed doors”—partly because its characters are locked inside a room. In edgier theater productions, they lock the whole audience into the theater for the duration of the play.