His youth seemed never so vanished as now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit and that riotous, joyful party of four years before. Things that had been the merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense of beauty around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they left were filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion.

Optimism is the content of small men in high places.

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives.

Of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. . . . Vitality never "takes." You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or a baritone voice.

Men don’t often know those times when a girl could be had for nothing.

The victor belongs to the spoils.