The early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better, and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn't want to know said "Yes, we have no bananas," and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were--and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more.

In short, you have only your emotions to sell. This is the experience of all writers.

one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty−one that everything afterward savors of anti−climax.

I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink every drop of it, I don't care if it kills me.

Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Let's borrow life preservers and jump over. I think we should do something spectacular. I feel that all our lives have been too restrained.

Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes that drew him or the mirror of himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of her mind?