The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance - that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it - then after a… - F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

The natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness.