Ilkka

“Are―you dying?" she asked.
"Just can't breathe. This air."
"Poor, poor―good lord. I've forgotten your name."
"Hell of a thing."
"Barney!"
He clutched her.
"No! Don't stop!" She arched her back. Her teeth chattered.
"I wasn't going to," he said.
"Oooaugh!"
He laughed.
"Don't please laugh at me."
"Not meant unkindly."
A long silence, then. Then, "Oof.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

“He was intrigued now, as when he had first met her, by her apparent lack of interest in him. 'Gertie, Gertie,' he said in humblest tones. 'I treated you badly.'

She peered at him rather rudely, as if trying to recollect what he was talking about. 'You were a stage on a journey,' she commented at last. 'Journeys are seldom comfortable.”
― Clare Boylan, Concerning virgins: A collection of short stories

“I was to be Martha, keeping busy with household chores in the background; she was to be Mary, laying pure devotion at Alex's feet. (Which does a man prefer? Bacon and eggs, or worship? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, depending how hungry he is.)”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin