Lionel Shriver, "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

But I have a theory about Dream Houses. Not for nothing does "folly" mean both foolhardy mistake and costly ornamental building. Because I've never seen a Dream House that works. Like ours, some of them almost work, though unqualified disasters are equally common. Part of the problem is that regardless of how much money you lavish on oak baseboards, an unhistoried house is invariably cheap in another dimension. Otherwise, the trouble seems rooted in the nature of beauty itself, a surprisingly elusive quality and rarely one  you can buy outright. It flees in the face of too much effort. It rewards casualness, and most of all it deigns to arrive by whim, by accident.