She saw me as I entered. She was glad to see me; I knew she was, because I could tell by the way her eyes widened. Her face brightened and that tight feeling caught my throat. All at once I was so happy, sure of myself, clean and conscious of my youth. I sat at [...]

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Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse [...]

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Psychoanalysis is inhuman, John Steinbeck tells Elia Kazan. You go and they help you make excuses for your actions. Steinbeck told the story of the older prisoner and the younger prisoner. The younger prisoner complains about the unfair judge, the lawyers, the prison conditions. The older prisoner says, Buddy, you do your time and I’ll [...]

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Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: ‘real things’ which were unfrequent and priceless, simple ‘things’ which formed the routine stuff of life; and ‘ghost things,’ also called ‘fogs,’ such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three [...]

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A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image. Went away for a while. Felt all the good things needed to be felt. Felt the sun beating on my back. Watched [...]

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