The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome.

Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have.

It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

I got to wear blinders all the time so I won't think sideways or in the past.

The theme is the theme of humiliation, which is the square root of sin, as opposed to the freedom from humiliation, and love, which is the square root of wonderful.

There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time--the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this.

We are homesick most for the places we have never known.