A writer's temperament is continually making him do things he can never repair.

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.

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

then, as though it had been waiting on a near by roof for their arrival, the moon came slanting suddenly through the vines and turned the girl's face the color of white roses.

but they were frightened at his survivant will, once a will to live, now become a will to die.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.