But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.
Edith Wharton...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.
Edith WhartonAnother unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
Edith WhartonAnd he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.
Edith Wharton