They spoke less and less between them until at last they were silent altogether as is often the way with travelers approaching the end of a journey.

I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.

For even if you should have stood your ground, he said, yet what ground was it?

Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.

What is it? Nothing. I had a bad dream. What did you dream about? Nothing. Are you okay? No. He put his arms around him and held him. It's okay, he said. I was crying. But you didnt wake up. I'm sorry. I was just so tired. I meant in the dream.

They trekked out along the crescent sweep of beach, keeping to the firmer sand below the tidewrack. They stood, their clothes flapping softly. Glass floats covered with a gray crust. The bones of seabirds. At the tideline a woven mat of weeds and the ribs of fishes in their millions stretching along the shore as far as the eye could see like an isocline of death. One vast salt sepulchre. Senseless. Senseless.

One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everybody is goin to get older with you.