Quote Needle in a Literary Haystack

May 2, 2008 7:28 AM

Literary Identification, please! Help me remember a passage about the quality of sleep and how it is transcendent when shared. I believe it is in one of the US-public-school-required-reading-by-a-British-guy novels.

I've asked around my friends (and my mom the librarian) and tried searching the intertubes to no avail. My brain keeps telling me it's DH Lawrence, but I can't confirm that (Well, I could re-read all the DH Lawrence I've ever read, but I have other things to read!) The phrase "quality of sleep" sticks with me too, but it could just as easily have been "rest" or not.

Ring any bells, anyone?

posted by crush-onastick to media & arts (4 comments total)

This one?

"Paul loved to sleep with his mother. Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved." - Attribution: D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence (1885–1930), British author. Originally published by Duckworth (1913). Sons and Lovers, ch. 4, Penguin Books (1989). Paul is Paul Morel, the hero.
posted by iconomy at 7:38 AM on May 2, 2008

Iconomy: yes! Thank you. Awesome!
posted by crush-onastick at 7:40 AM on May 2, 2008

Good! FYI, I went to google books advanced search and typed in sleep shared and searched author Lawrence. Here's the whole passage.
posted by iconomy at 7:48 AM on May 2, 2008

Google books is a thing I never remember exists. Thanks, now I don't have to find my copy and dig out the full passage.
posted by crush-onastick at 7:53 AM on May 2, 2008