Mark

“As Guy passed a member who greeted him another turned and asked : “Who was that ? Someone new isn’t it?”

‘No, he’s belonged for ages. You’ll never guess who he is. Virginia Troy’s first husband.’

‘Really? I thought she was married to Tommy Blackhouse.’

‘This chap was before Tommy. Can’t remember his name. I think he lives in Kenya. Tommy took her from him, then Gussie had her for a bit, then Bert Troy picked her up when she was going spare.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms

“She had that look - scared and sort of paralysed but frantic underneath - that girls got when they could think of only the one thing. It was a look that told him it would be her first time.”
― John Banville, Christine Falls

“But it was almost over, after all, her life. It swelled behind her like a sardine fishing net, all sorts of useless seaweed and broken bits of shells and the tiny, shining fish—all those hundreds of students she had taught, the girls and boys in high school she had passed in the corridor when she was a high school girl herself (many—most—would be dead by now), the billion streaks of emotion she’d had as she’d looked at sunrises, sunsets, the different hands of waitresses who had placed before her cups of coffee— All of it gone, or about to go.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive, Again

“Art is not subject to reason, it is intuitive. When you start creating what your powerful imagination tells you, when you surrender to your spiritual impulse and inspiration completely, without thinking beforehand about the end result of your creativity. It is then as if the emotional range of your sensitive mind has been crafted into the delicate spectrum of colors. A vision of black and white is now a marvel of mesmerizing stains.”
― Jazbia S., It Has Magic