Victory by Joseph Conrad

The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence, with a vulgar, ferocious energy.

The young man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning of the cost. It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world.  Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog, which the pitiless cold blasts of the father's analysis had blown away from the son.

Here I am on a Shadow inhabited by Shades.

House of Names by Colm Toibin

In the Clytementra final chapter in House of Names, she is dead and can't remember any names but moves through the palace corridors looking for someone.  only at the end does she remember her son Orestes' name.  It's very beautifully put, her speechlessness, because we see her thinking and only at the end does she blurt something out.  Reminds me of my mother, whom I'm sure is having all kinds of revlations and conversations and memories in her head that she can no longer find the words for.

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

Trajectory: Stories, by Richard Russo

The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter