The Good Earth (House of Earth, #1)

by Pearl S. Buck

Here was he promising a woman to a poor man, and once he had been a poor man come into these very courts for his woman.

Wang Lung groaned because there was no peace in his house.

she knew that men when they are old will wake once again to a brief youth,

there was not another one except himself who cared whether she lived or starved, and so he had bought a little bundle of white poisonous stuff at the medicine shop, and he had said to himself that he would give it to his fool to eat when he saw his own death was near.

“I am too old for you, and my fires are ashes.”

“I am filled with loathing,” she said, looking away, “I am filled with loathing and I hate them all. I hate all young men.”