[b]D.H. Lawrence
Religion was fading into the background. He had shovelled away all the beliefs that would hamper him, had cleared the ground, and come more or less to the bedrock of belief that one should feel inside oneself for right or wrong, and should have the patience to gradually realise one’s God. Now life interested him more.[/b]
As you might imagine, that doesn’t work for me.
He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him.
As you might imagine, that doesn’t work for me.
But you don’t fuck me cold-heartedly, she protested.
I don’t want to fuck you at all.
Let’s weep for their future.
You know, he said, with an effort, if one person loves, the other does.
I hope so, because if it were not, love might be a very terrible thing, she said.
Yes, but it is — at least with most people, he answered.
Let’s just say it’s not the least most perceptive observation.
And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore, the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is in the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.
Unlike, for example, philosophy.
Their words were only accidents in the mutual silence.
More in the way of grunts and sighs.