“‘You don’t see. I don’t want that.’
“‘What is it you want,’ she said without inflection.
“He looked down the river. What is it you want. He had wanted to go away with her, for one thing. The idea of going away had been weaving itself into the fabric of his daily life for months. He had not in the beginning (say in April) thought of it as a trip, a possibility, something which might easily be arranged by travel agents, steamship pursers, airline clerks; even by July, his desire had acquired neither the brilliantly attainable colorings of travel posters and Holiday magazine nor the subtler, more exotic pastels of Rand-McNally cartography. The want would strike him briefly, and at odd moments: while he talked price to the hop broker, or waited for someone to answer the telephone. Even before the idea took real shape, he had begun to count on it: when we’re gone, he would think without perceiving that he had thought it.”
— Joan Didion, Run, River (1963)
