Sons and Lovers

D.H. Lawrence wasn't kidding around when he wrote this novel. Seriously intense yet completely beautiful in an understated way. The psychological aspects of this story are stunning, especially if you've ever been in a tumultuous relationship. I think anyone can relate to at least one of these characters, if not to multiple characters at different points in their ever-thickening plot lines.

Visual imagery in this novel is incredible, whether it's the way a landscape is described or the appearance of characters... Lawrence really knew what he was doing.

I especially love the way everyone's feelings are laid bare for the reader to analyze and try to understand. In the course of one sentence, you'll read about the character's passionate love and sheer hate for a single object. It's a novel of opposites; of deep, misplaced love; of mothers and sons; and of the loves and hates of men and women.

"Now, when all her woman's pity was roused to its full extent, when she would have slaved herself to nurse him and to save him, when she would have taken the pain herself, if she could, somewhere far inside her, she felt indifferent to him and to his suffering. It hurt her most of all, the failure to love him, even when he roused her strong emotions."

"The girl was a romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero... might consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof."

"It's because - it's because there is scarcely any shadow in it; it's more shimmery, as if I'd painted the shimmering protoplasm in the leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of the shape. That seems dead to me. Only this shimmeriness is the real living thing. The shape is a dead crust. The shimmer is inside really."

"She saw him, slender and firm, as if the setting sun had given him to her. A deep pain took hold of her, and she knew she must love him. And she had discovered him, discovered in him a rare potentiality, discovered his loneliness."

"Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued, so he will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether."

"He hated her bitterly at that moment because he made her suffer. Love her! She knew he loved her. He really belonged to her. This about not loving her, physically, bodily, was a mere perversity on his part, because he knew she loved him. He was stupid like a child. He belonged to her. His soul wanted her."