"She had come to this, this seedy betrayal, and she knew it was time to leave these people who had such trunk-loads of dreams, ideas and ambitions but never anything in the present, only what would happen one day, and it was time to get away from it and face whatever might be waiting for her at home and hope that it might be as it had been; better and deeper pleasures with smaller, more ordinary things, pleasures so everyday that these people would never see anything in them but tiredness, repetition, discomfort, and no originality at all."

Bliss, Peter Carey