Bertbarber

“And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“All copulating creatures are vulnerable to attack, but selection over time must have proved that reproductive success was best served by undivided attention. Better to allow the occasional couple to be eaten midrapture than dilute by one jot a vigorous procreational urge. But for seconds on end I had wholesomely and simultaneously indulged two of life's central, antithetical pleasures, reading and fucking.”
― Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

“seeing it in the smoky shadow before dawn as a gradual multiplication”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run

“He said that there were three preconditions for happiness — stupidity, selfishness and good health”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot