If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.

Wonderful ... I was up all night reading it, laughing and crying out in horror.

Change itself is what fascinates me. I am drawn, as a moth to the flame, by edge situations, by situations of metamorphosis.

Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle.

No wonder, he thought, that the panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble.

Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.