France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter - it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.

New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

No decent career was ever founded on a public.

Nancy had a mouth like a remembered kiss.

Fairies: Nature's attempt to get rid of soft boys by sterilizing them.

There's a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but I really don't think it's very considerate.