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

There's no substitute for will. Sometimes you have to fake will when you don't feel it at all.

I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

He looked at her and for a moment she lived in the bright blue worlds of his eyes, eagerly and confidently.

I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation - with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't seeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game.

A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.