I just finished the novel The Rope Walk. Two passages really caught my eye:
"It seemed that in order to save oneself, again and again, one had to fight one's own instincts, one had to gain mastery over all the urgent imperatives of flesh and blood. One had to be less of oneself, in order to try and preserve that self" (p. 132).
"It was strange how electricity masked the actual sound of things, she thought, this deep silence that must be there all the time, lying beneath the hum of the lights" (p. 309).
Intriguing, no?