Mark Bernstein provides examples of emotional power in Hypertext. There are so many more, too:

From Douglas’ I have said nothing

—he’s not going to pieces: he’s trying to make a joke. But Luke can’t see it.

That’s because when Jake looks at Luke, he sees his daughter’s boyfriend looking hollow-eyed, slumped over in the visitor’s chair, the kind of morose, hang-dog type nearly always in need of a bit of cheering up.

He can’t even begin to imagine what Luke sees when he looks across at him. When Luke looks at Jake, he doesn’t see someone who will never walk again. What he sees is a man who hasn’t yet realized that the two daughters he saw on Christmas day are now two tidy piles of ashes lying in two gold foil boxes, stowed in a rented house somewhere in North Hollywood.

And just a shorty from Completing the Circle,

We have nailed ourselves to eternity.