Even though I said it was too much work to quote John Cheeever's words, my soul will not rest until I do.
"He lighted a cigarette and looked at the stranger's face - pasty and round and worn it seemed, with such anxieties as cooking, catching trains and buying useful presents at Christmas."
"There was no kindliness in her face. She gave him that appalling look of bitterness that we exchange when we are too tired, or too exacerbated by our own ill luck, to care whether our neighbors live or die."
"His reality seemed assailed or contested; his gifts for hopefulness seemed damaged or destroyed. There is a parochialism to some kinds of misery - a geographical remoteness like the life led by a grade-crossing tender - a point where life is lived or endured at the minimum of energy and perception and where most of the world appears to pass swiftly by like passengers on the gorgeous trains of the Santa Fe. Such a life has its compensations - solitaire and star-wishing - but it is a life stripped of friendship, association, love and even the practicable hope of escape."
From The Wapshot Chronicle, by John Cheever
I love this stuff. He drops these bombs of informed opinion into every story - on people and life - words that knock me over every time.
There - don't you feel better now?
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