Date: 1998

"His nakedness against the sheet, the wanton tangle of bedclothes by his ankle, and the sight of his own genitalia, at his age not yet fully obscured by the swell and spread of his gut, sent vague sexual thoughts floating across his mind like remote summer clouds."

— McEwan, Ian (b. 1948)

Date: 2018

"His mind was a synthetic sky: blue, blank, cloudless."

— Hermione Hoby