I'll never be a poet,' said Amory as he finished. 'I'm not enough of a sensualist really; there are only a few obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea; I don't catch the subtle things like 'silver-snarling trumpets.' I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never right anything but mediocre poetry.

One hurries through, even though there's time; the past, the continent, is behind; the future is the glowing mouth in the side of the ship; the dim, turbulent alley is too confusedly the present.

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

Even when everything seems rotten you can't trust that judgment. It's the sum of all your judgments that counts.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

The things that'll make you fail I'll love always.

If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.