Maxim Stanley

“He stood up and took off the dressing gown, the skullcap, the slippers. He took off the linen trousers and shirt. He took off his head like a toupee, took off his collarbones like shoulder straps, took off his rib cage like a hauberk. He took off his hips and his legs, he took off his arms like gauntlets and threw them in a corner. What was left of him gradually dissolved, hardly coloring the air.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

“Mrs Armstid does not rattle the stove now, though her back is still toward the younger woman. Then she turns. They look at one another, suddenly naked, watching one another; the young woman in the chair, with her neat hair and her inert hands upon her lap, and the older one beside the stove, turning motionless too, with a savage screw of gray hair at the base of her skull, and a face that might have been carved in sandstone. Then the younger one speaks.”
― William Faulkner, Light in August

“The Savage," wrote Bernard in his report to Mustapha Mond, "shows surprisingly little astonishment at, or awe of, civilized inventions. This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he has heard them talked about by the woman Linda, his m---."

(Mustapha Mond frowned. "Does the fool think I'm too squeamish to see the word written out at full length?")”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New Work

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
― C. S. Lewis