The hardest thing for me is the sense of impermanence. All passes; nothing returns.

He knows so little and knows it so fluently.

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.

I ain't never seen no head so level that it could bear the lettin' in of politics.

I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.

But youth isn't happy. Youth is sadder than age.

Only on the surface of things have I ever trod the beaten path. So long as I could keep from hurting anyone else, I have lived, as completely as it was possible, the life of my choice. I have been free. . . . I have done the work I wished to do for the sake of that work alone.