Venus

“He wished to be within earshot when Aimée emerged from her sleep, since each time she did so she would find herself deeper in what seemed like a nightmare.
‘You comprehend, signora? Reversal of waking from bad dreams. For this child such dreams begin then.”
― William Trevor, Two Lives

“They did not believe death was accidental--life might be, but death was deliberate. They did not believe Nature was ever askew--only inconvenient. Plague and drought were as "natural" as springtime. If milk could curdle, God knows robins could fall. The purpose of evil was to survive it and they determined (without ever knowing they had made up their minds to it) to survive floods, white people, tuberculosis, famine and ignorance. They knew anger well but not dispair, and they didn't stone sinners for the same reason they didn't commit suicide--it was beneath them.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“It had to do with making a place for fear as a way of controlling it. He knew the smell of death and was terrified of it, for he could not anticipate it. It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula