Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work-- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside-- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within-that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

I want to do everything in the world with you.

She was overstrained with grief and loneliness: almost any shoulder would have done as well.

So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.

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