Conditions in the [movie] industry somehow propose the paradox: "We brought you here for your individuality but while you're here we insist that you do everything to conceal it.

Every act of life, from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner, became an effort. I hated the night when I couldn't sleep and I hated the day because it went toward night.

then, as though it had been waiting on a near by roof for their arrival, the moon came slanting suddenly through the vines and turned the girl's face the color of white roses.

Long afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest time of his life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found it; he wanted no more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen new-found friendships through the April afternoons.

I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires.

Art isn't meaningless... It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.

The strongest guard is placed at the gateway to nothing. Maybe because the condition of emptiness is too shameful to be divulged.