Willa

This will never stop being my favorite.

"She smiled -- though she was ashamed of it -- with the natural contempt of strength for weakness, with the sense of physical security which makes the savage merciless.  Nobody could die while he felt like that inside.  The springs there were wound so tight that it would be a long while before there was any slack in them.  The life in there was rooted deep.  She was going to have a few things before she died.  She realized that there were a great many trains dashing east and west on the face of the continent that night, and that they all carried young people who meant to have things.  But the difference was that she was going to get them!  That was all.  Let people try to stop her!  She glowered at the rows of feckless bodies that lay sprawled in the chairs.  Let them try it once!  Along with the yearning that came from some deep part of her, that was selfless and exalted, Thea had a hard kind of cockiness, a determination to get ahead.  Well, there are passages in life when that fierce, stubborn self-assertion will stand its ground after the nobler feeling is overwhelmed and beaten under." 

Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

1937

Baya and the Thunderstorm, Wisconsin Summer, 2012