Always Quotes (page 402)
I had always thought that wringing one’s hands was a fictional gesture — the obscure outcome, perhaps, of some medieval ritual; but as I took to the woods, for a spell of despair and desperate meditation, this was the gesture (“look, Lord, at these chains!”) that would have come nearest to the mute expression of my mood.
Vladimir Nabokov
She's talking about condominiums," my friend Betty Searle called up to say one day. "Obviously she's involved with someone."Are you sure?" I said. Of course I'm sure," said Betty. "The question is who." She thought for a minute. "Maybe it's Senator Campbell," she said. "He's talking condominiums, too."Senators always talk about condominiums," I said. That's true," said Betty.
Nora Ephron
His response to them as sexual beings was one of frenzied worship and idolatry. They were lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure too powerful to be measured, too keen to be endured, and too exquisite to be intended for employment by base, unworthy man. He could interpret their naked presence in his hands only as a cosmic oversight destined to be rectified speedily, and he was driven always to make what carnal use of them he could in the...
Joseph Heller