From Here to Eternity

by James Jones

Furtively, on the side away from him, privately, she slipped her hand down to her belly, feeling with her fingers the thick ridge of the scar. There lies the evil, she thought hysterically, the grape torn open and the seed plucked out and left withering on the vine. All the foulness of all the soppy secret dampness, the sliding slippery airless dark came back on her now and overwhelmed her as the gaseous bubble burst in her mind, scenting it with the memory of foulness that she must escape.

“If you love someone,” Jack Malloy said, “you never even think of forgiving them. You may fight them like hell over something, and use every pressure to change them. But when the brawl is all over and you havent changed them one bit, you go right on accepting them. You’re never so smug, or so righteous, or so superior, to tell yourself—or tell them—you forgive them.”

“it seems like life is made up of saying hello to people we dont like and good-by to people we do.”