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“Along the banks of the Seine the couples strolled as always on summer nights, hand in hand, slowly as if drinking wine in the dusk and love and youth that will never, however hard they try, be quite the same again.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A Novel

“One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The vision soothed him, calmed his fears and his doubts, made him fatalistic towards the inscrutable purpose of the universe. It all seemed to matter so little - the pathetic quest for love, or the return to solitude.”
― John Le Carré