The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder—the thing one's so certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?

... caprice is as ruinous as routine.

Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?

... even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump.

To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?

She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.

...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.