The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye.

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

With no banal reassuring grown-ups present, with grown-up intervention taken away, there is no limit to the terror strange children feel of each other, a terror life obscures but never ceases to justify. There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

... love dreads being isolated, being left to speak in a void -- at the beginning it would often rather listen than speak.

Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.