From Here to Eternity

Finally finished this amazing book. Can't figure out how he did it - creating this Warden character. So moving and melodramatic and interesting. I love the entire sequence of Pearl Harbor when Warden organizes the company and they get off shooting down Japanese planes from the roofs of their barracks. The sheer glee was amazing.

Some quotes from pages I marked:

"Society does everything it can to prevent love like ours and what it cant prevent it destroys. Securely married American men dont like to think their wives have the right to leave them - not for love, which has never bought anything yet. And securely married American women who have been talked into believing it, know they've been duped, that why they hate that kind of love worst of all because have all had to sacrifice it for security and hate themselves for doing it so much they dont want anybody else to have a chance at it."
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"Either he forgot all about it in the excitement of the music, or else he wanted to keep his real love and his business separate. It was as if this queer only propositioned men who were too dull and insensitive to appreciate guitar, so he could degrade them for their lack, and himself for associating with them."
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"I've never been ashamed of anything I ever did in my life," Warden snorted. "Includin that. Shame aint a spontaneous emotion; shame is an induced emotion. A man who knows his own mind dont know what shame is."

There's much much more. I highly recommended, if you like big broad novels to get lost in, checking this one out.