he could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and contour.

A lot of young girls together is a romantic secret thing like the first sight of wild ducks at dawn.

People talk of the courage of convictions, but in actual life a man's duty to his family may make a rigid course seem a selfish indulgence of his own righteousness.

There’s a writer for you,” he said. “Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing.” [narrator]It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers—because if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answer—still it belittled him in my eyes. Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It’s like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying—only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

Don't forget who you are and where you come from.

She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible.

but they were frightened at his survivant will, once a will to live, now become a will to die.