“In the vigour of his age he married Gargamelle, daughter to the King of the Parpaillons, a jolly pug, and well-mouthed wench. These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon ‘gainst one another, in so far, that at last she became great with child of a fair son, and went with him unto the eleventh month…”
—Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

I’ve been reading this book by Per Petterson on loan to me from my friend, Sue. She thought I would like it, and said that the author really “knows how to turn a phrase”.

In one particular scene — one of many very powerful scenes of a young man, the author presumably, the protagonist, becomes through his experiences an adult — the author describes Trond leaving his father on a bus for Oslo to his home with his mother, somehow knowing that this juncture is severe and huge, that something is happening for which he has no words and cannot grasp or understand the full significance of, and closes with this particularly powerful phrasing:

…and then I forced myself to sit still on my seat and finally I fell asleep with the rattling window banging against my head and the drone of the diesel engine singing in my ears.

And phrases like that after the scene portrayed rock me and send waves of feeling through my body.