I want to die violently instead of fading out sentimentally.

The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.

I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the 'Yale News.'—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

When I see a beautiful shell like that I can't help feeling a regret about what's inside it.

A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty.

Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on.

Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willow. May came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered the campus at all hours through starlight and rain.