From St. Mawr by D. H. Lawrence.

Lou:

As far as people go, my heart is quite broken. As far as people go, I don’t want any more. I can’t stand any more. What heart I ever had for it — for life with people — is quite broken. I want to be alone, mother: with you here, and Phoenix perhaps to look after horses and drive a car. But I want to be by myself, really.

Mrs. Witt:

I’m convinced that ever since men and women were men and women, people who took things seriously, and had time for it, got their hearts broken. Haven’t I had mine broken? It’s as sure as having your virginity broken: and it amounts to about as much. It’s a beginning rather than an end.

Lou:

I’ve got to live for something that matters, way down in me. And I think sex would matter to my very soul, if it was really sacred. But cheap sex kills me . . . I dislike [men] because they’re not men enough: babies, and playboys, and poor things showing off all the time, even to themselves. I don’t say I’m any better. I only wish, with all my soul, that some men were bigger and stronger and deeper than I am . . . No, mother, of this I am convinced: either my taking a man shall have a meaning and a mystery that penetrates my very soul, or I will keep to myself . . . And to [the spirit that is wild], my sex is deep and sacred, deeper than I am, with a deep nature aware deep down of my sex.