24
" Intercourse with resuscitated wife for particular number of days, superstitious act designed to insure safe operation of household machinery. Electricity mourns the absence of the energy from (wife) within the household’s walls by stalling its flow to the outlets. As such, an improvised friction need to take the place of electricity, to goad the natural currents back to their proper levels. This is achieved with the dead wife. She must be found, revived, and then penetrated until heat fills the room, until the toaster is shooting bread onto the floor, until she is smiling beneath you with black teeth and grabbing your bottom. Then the vacuum rides by and no one is pushing it, it is on full steam. Days flip past in chunks of fake light, and the intercourse is placed in the back of the mind. But it is always there, that moving into a static-ridden corpse that once spoke familiar messages in the morning when the sun was new. "
26
" You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light.
A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires . . .
his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that
which was old, but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream.
Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that
which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the
restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the
thing you called the curse of man and mocked; guilt! "
― Roger Zelazny , Lord of Light
28
" Poetry of World War I, at least in its lyrical mode, was itself the last flowering of the Age of Innocence that preceded the war, that the horrors of the trenches sparked the final blossoming, as friction gives rise to fire; that the daily nightmare unfolding before the soldiers sharpened their sense of beauty, prophecy, and mission. "
― Philip Zaleski , The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
33
" Oh, the way he was looking at her, really looking at her . . . this was the Christopher of her dreams. This was the man who had written to her. He was so caring, and real, and dazzling, that she wanted to weep.
“I thought . . .” Christopher broke off and drew his thumb over the hot surface of her cheek.
“I know,” she whispered, her nerves sparking in excitement at his touch.
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
“I know.”
His gaze went to her parted lips, lingering until she felt it like a caress. Her heart labored to supply blood to her nerveless limbs. Every breath caused her body to lift up against his, a teasing friction of firm flesh and clean, warm linen.
Beatrix was transfixed by the subtle changes in his face, the heightening color, the silver brightness of his eyes.
She wondered if he were going to kiss her.
And a single word flashed through her mind.
Please. . . "
― Lisa Kleypas , Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5)
