...for a moment people set down their glasses in county clubs and speak-easies and thought of their old best dreams.

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.

The Montana sunset lay between the mountains like a giant bruise from which darkened arteries spread across a poisoned sky.

Courage to me means ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life-not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things...My courage is faith-faith in the eternal resilience of me-that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does, I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide

I was too absorbed to be responsive

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.

You don’t know what a trial it is to be —like me. I've got to keep my face like steel in the street to keep men from winking at me.