“Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties [she did] and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations. Our bright natures fight in us with this yeasty darkness, and neither part is commonly quite victorious, for we are divided against ourselves.”
Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Dactyl Review 