"Waiting for the Barbarians" by J.M. Coetzee

"I have not entered her. From the beginning my desire has not taken on that direction, that directedness. Lodging my dry old man's member in that blood-hot sheath makes me think ofacid in milk, ashes in honey, chalk in bread. When I look at her naked body and my own, I find it impossible to believe that once upon a time I imagined the human form as a flower radiating out from a kernel in the loins. These bodies of hers and mine are difuss, gaseous, centreless, at one moment spinning about a vortex here, at another curdling, thickening elsewhere; but often so flat, blank. I know what to do with her no more than a cloud in the sky knows what to do with another"

J. M. Coetzee.
Wainting for the Barbarians

de "Atonement" por Ian McEwan

"They were safe, Cecilia was with Leon, and she, Briony, was free to wander in the dark and contemplate her extraordinary day. Her childhood had ended, she decided now as she came away from the swimming pool, the moment she tore down her poster. The fairy stories were behind her, and in the space of a few hours she had witnessed mysteries, seen an unspeakable word, interrupted brutal behavior, and by incurring the hatred of an adult whom everyone had trusted, she had become a participant in the drama of life beyond the nursery. All she had to do now was discover the stories, not just the subjects, but a way of unfolding them, that would do justice to her new knowledge. Or did she mean, her wiser grasp of her own ignorance?"

fragmento de "Him Her Him Again The End of Him" de Patricia Marx

Es evidente porqué me llamó la atención esta parte de una novela que parecería "Sex and the City" meets el mundo de la academia.

I can't resist telling you now how much I detested Etienne. He and Obax were polar studies majors. His area was ice thickness; Obax didn't have an area. She thought Etienne was cute and he was - in a Peugeot bicycle kind of way. You'd think that I, of all people, would have been sympathetic to someone enthralled with a guy who nobody considered enthrall-worthy. You'd think, but you'd be wrong.
Soon after Obax met Etienne, she told me she had called her father in Somalia and said, "Daddy, I met the greatest guy and he has a dishwasher!"
"Obax," she said her father had said, "if you are dating a man because he has a dishwasher, I will fly to England and buy you one."
Obax did not tell her father that Etienne was militant about having sex with her three times a day. I don't know if you regard that as a good thing or a bad thing, but I know which side Obax's father would have been on.
Thanks to Etienne, I was morally opposed to marriage. He had todl Obax that the institution was "for seulement le petit bourgeoise." That sounded so smart I repeated it for years. For similar reasons, he was also against train schedules - "just becasuse it is when they go, it is when I go?"...