Chapter 4 of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is fantastic.
The main character, Robert Jordan, returns from scouting a bridge he is to demolish only to discover Pablo, his erstwhile local support, is set against him doing the deed. There is no profit to him in it, only swift retribution.
Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
-- Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro
