David

“Dana had Society, Respectability, Tradition, Moral judgment, Time, Security (especially Security), and the generations of cuckolded husbands who had provided him with lessons in how to win by employing patience. Dana Holmes could afford to laugh at Milt Warden who had the audacity to try to defeat this array of heavy artillery with the popgun of Love. Because could you just point out to me once, please, sir, one single time that Love had ever bought anything? In these United States of the United Middle Class of Solid-Fronted United Greater America?”
― James Jones, From here to eternity: de volledige en ongecensureerde editie

“...and my heart tightened for the hard compulsions of the poor.”
― Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

“Was it possible to throw his life away in order to be polite?”
― Ian McEwan, Lessons

“The light grew stronger, gushing up against the dark sap-hire of the transparent night. The light grew stronger, whiter, then over it hovered a flush of rose. A flush of rose, and then yellow, pale, new-created yellow, the whole quivering and poising momentarily over the fountain on the sky’s rim. The rose hovered and quivered, burned, fused to flame, to a transient red, while the yellow urged out in great waves, thrown from the ever-increasing fountain, great waves of yellow flinging into the sky, scattering its spray over the darkness, which became bluer and bluer, paler, till soon it would itself be a radiance, which had been darkness. The sun was coming.”
― D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow