Hm.

“She closed her eyes, and bunches of roses were printed for an instant, startlingly white upon the darkness, then faded, as the darkness itself paled, the sun from the window coming brilliantly through her lids. Trying to check life itself, she thought, to make some of the hurrying everyday things immprtal, to paint the everyday things with tenderness and intimacy—the dirty café, with its pock-marked mirrors as if they had been shot at, its curtly hat-stands, its stained marble under the yellow light; wet pavements; an old woman yawning. With tenderness and intimacy. With sentimentality, too, she wondered. For was I not guilty of making ugliness charming? An English sadness like a veil over all I pained, until it became ladylike and nostalgic, governessy, utterly lacking in ferocity, brutality, violence. Whereas in the centre of the earth, in the heart of life, in the core of even everyday things, is there not violence, with flames wheeling, turmoil, pain, chaos?”

Elizabeth Taylor, A Wreath of Roses (1949)