Five Wounds: Epigraphs

My novel, Five Wounds, begins with two epigraphs, as follows:

1. Attributed to Diane Arbus

Most people go through life dreading that they
are going to have a traumatic experience.
Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already
passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.

2. Franz Kafka, The City Coat of Arms

All legends and songs originating in this city are
filled with nostalgia for a prophesied day when
the city would be smashed to bits by five blows in
rapid succession from a gigantic fist.

(In the second quotation, the city in question is that surrounding the base of the Tower of Babel, which is significant for reasons that will become apparent if you read the novel. )

I chose these two passages only after experimenting with several others, which, taken together, along with an explanation of why I ultimately felt each to be unsuitable, may give some sense of the book's themes and tone. Below is a completed list of these rejected epigraphs.

1. Radiohead, Creep

I’m a creep.
I’m a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.

Reason for Rejection: The song is overexposed, and as a summary of the book's themes, this is a little on the nose.

2. Michel Houellebecq, H. P. Lovecraft: Against Life, Against the World.

Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more. Humanity, such as it is, inspires only an attenuated curiosity in us. …. Now, here is Howard Phillips Lovecraft: “I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page or deals with the horrors unnamable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes”.

Reason for Rejection: There are actually some drafts of the book in which this is used as an epigraph, but I decided in the end that neither Lovecraft nor Houellebecq was quite the right stylistic reference point.

3. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project.

That which the allegorical intention has fixed upon is sundered from the customary contexts of life: it is at once shattered and preserved. Allegory holds fast to the ruins.

Reason for Rejection: This is, in its own convoluted way, perfect, but even I’m not sure what it actually means, and impenetrable obscurity is probably not the best way of grabbing the reader’s attention.

4. Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit.

Hell is other people.

Reason for Rejection: It would be a little pretentious to quote Sartre when I’ve only ever read a cartoon-style introduction to his work.

5. A joke from the episode ‘Underneath’ in Angel.

Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he’d forgotten, and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor shaking, and then through the floor and into the earth. He looks back up at the first man, but he doesn’t call out to him.

They’re not that close.

Reason for Rejection: This encapsulates the book’s themes perfectly. So why didn't I use it? Something about the tone doesn't feel quite right. Or maybe the deadpanned conclusion is just a little too dark, even for me.