By what chance, or worse what law of the universe was she set there in the road to power and success, unbreakable yet tormenting with the need to conquer and break? ... Those nights of imagined copulation, when one thought not of love nor sensation nor comfort nor triumph, but of torture rather, the very rhythm of the body reinforced by hissed ejaculations - take that and that! That for your pursed mouth and that for your pink patches, your closed knees, your impregnable balance on the high, female shoes - and that if it kills you for your magic and your isled virtue!

- William Golding (Pincher Martin, 1956).

Picture: 'Homme et Femme' by Félix Vallotton (1913).