And lately, when he started coming home with a beaten look and announcing darkly that he doubted if he could hold on much longer, she would enjoin the children not to bother him (Daddy's very tired tonight"), bring him a drink and soothe him with careful wifely reassurance, doing her best to conceal her fear, never guessing, or at least never showing, that she was dealing with a chronic, compulsive failure, a strange little boy in love with the attitudes of collapse.

- Richard Yates, A Glutton for Punishment, from Eleven Kinds of Loneliness