'...She hadn't any vulgar longing for story or plot, natural patterns were enough with their inconsequent significance, their broken cadences and unplanned twists of irony. Life directed, edited, and shaped gave her less satisfaction, not more. It was second-hand; this was first-hand, quite genuine raw material, as potentially interesting as murder, rape and arson. [...] They fascinated her as the water, moving by the ship's side, always changing, always the same, fascinated her. This had been a typical day at sea. Its very normality was a sort of curiosity, an inverted stimulus. Its very fragmentariness stirred in her the wish to mould it to some literary ends. Each of these people placed a thread in her hand; if she followed it into her own mind she could walk the mazes of their lives. She felt that power in her. Why shouldn't she shape something out of the little chaos about her? These thoughts were not hard and clear; rather were they a sensuous mental drifting, a state of mind, peaceful but fertile, created in her by the rhythm of the ship...'
from The Glasshouse by M. Barnard Eldershaw (Book One, Chapter III)
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