"Emily pressed her breast, ‘Oh, what a pang! I suppose you really could die laughing, Suzanne? It’s an awful rolling spasm, you’re out of control, but madly happy, inhumanly happy, you feel as if you’ll go over the edge of the precipice in another minute, and at the same time, delicious, strange, only you. You feel as if now you’ve escaped, it’s you and you’re dying because it’s you. I suppose you could go into convulsions? Oh, I think it was because I was just talking about my physical sufferings as a fat girl and I was given over entirely to remembering my sufferings physical, so very physical. And the body gets up like an immense giant and grabs me and balances me over the cliff, threatening to toss me over. Oh, heigh-ho, nothing in my life compares with my physical feelings. How often are we physical in life, Suzanne? A hot bath? Pouah! A childbirth, well, yes, it is. Sex? I mean compared with what I felt just then? I wanted to love, Suzanne, I madly wanted to love but I wanted it to be like that. But it can’t be. And that’s an intellectual for you. I guess I know how coal-heavers feel on Saturday night.’"
- Christina Stead,  I'm Dying Laughing.